This paper presents an original approach to designing social media that support informal learning in the digital workplace. It adapts design-based research to take into account the embeddedness of interactions within digitally mediated work-based contexts. The approach is demonstrated through the design, implementation, and evaluation of software…

The "emerging educational institutional decision-making matrix" is developed to allow educational institutions to adopt a rigorous and consistent methodology of determining which of the myriad of emerging educational technologies will be the most compelling for the institution, particularly ensuring that it is the educational or pedagogical but…

Personalized instruction is seen as a desideratum of today's e-learning systems. The focus of this paper is on those platforms that use learning styles as personalization criterion called learning style-based adaptive educational systems. The paper presents an innovative approach based on an integrative set of learning preferences that alleviates…

The use of the Web to deliver open, distance, and flexible learning has opened up the potential for social interaction and adaptive learning, but the usability, expressivity, and interoperability of the available tools leave much to be desired. This article explores these issues as they relate to teachers and learning designers through the case of…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the activities designed and conducted with primary school, secondary school and university students to study the integration of alternative assessment and self-assessment online tools in mathematics courses using iTest. iTest is an educational software tool born to support the continuous evaluation system…

OpenCourseWare (OCW) is one among several models for offering open educational resources (OER). This article explains the OCW model and its position within the broader OER context. OCW primarily represents publication of existing course materials already in use for teaching purposes. OCW projects are most often institutional, carrying the…

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) that employ a model-tracing methodology have consistently shown their effectiveness. However, what evidently makes these tutors effective, the cognitive model embedded within them, has traditionally been difficult to create, requiring great expertise and time, both of which come at a cost. Furthermore, an…

This paper describes the achievements of an innovative eight-year research program first introduced in Mizoguchi and Bourdeau (2000), which was aimed at building a theory-aware authoring system by using ontological engineering. To date, we have proposed OMNIBUS, an ontology that comprehensively covers different learning/instructional theories and…

Over the last decade, the Intelligent Computer Tutoring Group (ICTG) has implemented many successful constraint-based Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) in a variety of instructional domains. Our tutors have proven their effectiveness not only in controlled lab studies but also in real classrooms, and some of them have been commercialized.…

Since 2002 the "Zurich E-Learning Certificate" offers lecturers and academic staff from the three main universities in Zurich the possibility to take part in a professional development program which supports the acquirement of eCompetence. The program is the result of a cooperation between the University of Zurich (UZH), the Swiss…

The d'Arbeloff Interactive Mathematics Project or d'AIMP is an initiative that seeks to enhance and ultimately transform the teaching and learning of introductory mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A result of this project is a suite of "mathlets," a carefully developed set of dynamic computer applets for use in the…

Negotiation skills are essential in everyday life, whether in a professional or personal context. Negotiation enables two parties to address misunderstandings and avoid conflicts through an exchange that depends as much on the interpersonal skills of the negotiators as the tactics employed. Acquiring these skills requires not only sound conceptual…

Most successes in intelligent tutoring systems have come in well-defined domains like algebra or physics. We investigate how to support students in acquiring ill-defined skills of intercultural competence using an online environment that employs clips of feature films from a target culture. To test the effectiveness of a set of attention-focusing…

The introduction of an online learning management system (LMS) raises a number of complex issues involving institutional responses at various levels to the adoption and diffusion of technological change. Issues include those related to governance, management and technical support, as well as to core learning and teaching matters associated with…

The Carroll Center for the Blind operates the Ed-Tech Loan Program which enables Massachusetts schools to borrow adaptive computer devices for blind students. For $50 per month, with a three-month maximum, schools can borrow braille printers, large-print processors, talking software, or speech or braille laptop computers to evaluate before making…