This article showcases a virtual interactive participatory design activity for building a digital entomology lab. Conceptualized as a virtual complement to a general entomology course at Kansas State University, the lab would allow learners to explore morphological aspects of insects--their various forms and functions--in order to understand…

Interactive tabletops are gaining increased attention from CSCL researchers. This paper analyses the relation between this technology and teaching and learning processes. At a global level, one could argue that tabletops convey a socio-constructivist flavor: they support small teams that solve problems by exploring multiple solutions. The…

Schools and educators are under considerable pressure to change. Educators have reported varying attitudes to the use of computers, ranging from supportive to negative. However, there is an acceptance that cannot simply be overlooked. It will also be important to consider all aspects of the educators' beliefs, resistance and the anxieties that…

This paper reports on the use and impact of a negotiated intervention for teacher development adopted for facilitating the teaching and learning in a semester-long fully online graduate course in a tertiary institution in New Zealand. The negotiated intervention strategy, while it begins by exploring teachers' current practice, is explicit in…

This paper describes a new social networking site, Cloudworks, which has been developed to enable discussion and sharing of learning and teaching ideas/designs and to promote reflective academic practice. The site aims to foster new forms of social and participatory practices (peer critiquing, sharing, user-generated content, aggregation, and…

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) typically display great difficulties in social-communication and interaction skills. Their difficulties with communication skills can impede their social interactions with both peers and adults. Thus, an important goal of interventions for children with ASD is to better ensure their social…

This paper presents the benefits and costs of providing students with unlimited access to programmable boards in digital design education, allowing hands-on experiences outside traditional laboratory settings. Studies were conducted at three universities in two different countries--Rose Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, IN; Washington…

Students with disabilities benefit when technology is used to promote their literacy learning. The authors describe TECH, a framework educators can use to select, implement, and monitor the impact of technology in relation to literacy goals. The framework is shown in action for mathematics vocabulary and reading comprehension skills for a student…

Adaptive tools and techniques for lecture instruction were developed for a blind student in a nonmajors college chemistry course. These adaptive instructional aids assisted the student in writing and balancing chemical reactions, calculating unit conversions and concentrations, drawing Lewis dot structures, understanding structural representations…

The Digital Teaching Platform (DTP) brings the power of interactive technology to teaching and learning in classrooms. In this authoritative book, top researchers in the field of learning science and educational technology examine the current state of design and research on DTPs, the principles for evaluating them, and their likely evolution as a…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impacts of ICT use on achievements by considering not only ICT use, but also the process and background variables that influence ICT use at both the student- and school-level. This study was conducted using data from the 2010 Survey of Seoul Education Longitudinal Research. A Hierarchical Linear…

This paper considers the two-year-long process of redesigning Art Theory: Modernism, the initial core art theory course at The University of Newcastle in Australia, with the aim of increasing the academic engagement of first year fine art students. First year students are particularly vulnerable to dropping out if they feel disengaged from the…

There are a multitude of diverse technologies available for integration in the college classroom, but considering how to implement these initiatives can be overwhelming to the instructor. The adaptation of this technology is often very simple and involves little more than the Internet and basic word processing skills. A review of the multimedia…

A small-group, web-interactive approach to teaching precalculus concepts was investigated. Following an online pretest, 3 participants were given a brief (15 min) presentation on the details of reciprocal math relations and how they operate on the coordinate axes. During baseline, participants were tested regarding their ability to construct…

More than a decade after Prensky's influential articulation of digital natives and immigrants, disagreement exists around these characterizations of students and the impact of such notions within higher education. Perceptions of today's undergraduate learners as tech-savvy "digital natives" (Prensky, 2001a), who both want and need the…