There is a growing prevalence in the use of digital media for education management and international partnerships; however, research continues to reflect the position that the absence of social interaction is a major barrier to a positive on-line learning experience. In 2007, a paper described the application of PESTE (Political, Economic, Social,…

As university lecturers, we often struggle to provide our students with good quality feedback in a consistent manner. This is usually caused by the increasing imbalance in teacher-student ratios (Hounsell et al., 2008), as well as the pressure of academic life and the lack of time (Sadler, 2010). In addition, assessment practices should be…

Portfolio assessment is a valid and reliable method to assess experiential learning. Developing a fully online portfolio assessment program is neither easy nor inexpensive. The institution seeking to take its portfolio assessment program online must make a commitment to its students by offering the technologies most suited to meet students' needs.…

Interactive computer simulations with complex representations and sophisticated graphics are a relatively new addition to the classroom, and research in this area is limited. We have conducted over 200 individual student interviews during which the students described what they were thinking as they interacted with simulations. These interviews…

Describes eight conditions that facilitate the adoption, implementation, and institutionalization of educational technology innovations and suggests applications to the transfer of portable software. Applications of these conditions involving educational technology in Indonesia, Chile, and Peru are evaluated, and guidelines for successful…

Getting real educational benefits from investments in technology requires careful planning. Based on the experience of implementing PLATO[R] at over 5,000 sites, a nine-step planning model for implementing technology was developed. The nine planning tasks are based on the understanding of the factors that are critical to the success of most…

Presents guidelines and suggestions for the use of computers with young children. Provides a checklist of attributes of good early childhood software and tips for introducing software to young children. (RJC)

Addresses the nonuse and misuse of sound when designing instruction using educational technology and presents the Structured Sound Functions (SSF) Model to improve sound attribute research and scriptwriting guidelines. The preference for visual interfaces is discussed, including educational television (ETV), and the creation of sound-image…

Considers the relevance of human-computer interaction (HCI) guidelines for educational interface design, including why educational software is different from other products; differences in goal focus; performance and learning; and experiments that investigated transfer of learning, including implications for the design of educational technologies.…

Provides computer literate foreign language specialists in higher education with a manageable set of domain-specific design principles and guidelines for alleviating the complexity of design issues arising out of authoring hypermedia second language learning applications. Notes that the guidelines proposed result from a tailored selection process.…

Significant improvements in instructional design and in the development of classroom support materials, as well as the blurring of lines separating computer software, computer-interactive videodisc, CD-ROM, and other new technologies, are cited as the rationale for combining three topics covered by separate guidelines published in…

This paper describes how the authors use a mixture of World Wide Web (WWW)-based functionalities and new didactics to teach educational technology students at the University of Twente (Netherlands) about the design of WWW-based learning environments. Topics discussed include: (1) the content of courses about the design of educational WWW…

This paper shows how to use design patterns for building educational multimedia applications. The first section summarizes design issues related to organizing the information, the organization of the interface, and implementation. Navigating through information is covered in the second section, including problems, motivations, and solutions, and…

A heterogeneous distributed database systems (HDDS) offers distance education networks feasible, simple, cost-effective, and efficient database access systems. An HDDS can be used to provide information on available courses, course design, registration procedures, hardware and software use and availability, and library resources. (Author/AEF)

This paper provides a balanced set of guidelines for reviewing educational software, and offers a simple and practical procedure that can be used to select software for instructional purposes. The procedure applies equally well to individual "titles" or to large-scale curriculum-based systems. It applies to software delivered on a CD-ROM, through…