The integration of external tools in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) aims at enriching the learning activities that educational practitioners may design and enact. This paper presents GLUE!, an architecture that enables the lightweight integration of multiple existing external tools in multiple existing VLEs. GLUE! fosters this integration by…

This article examines the use of a focused educational game. The game, "Behavior Breakthroughs"[TM], was created to teach people that work with children with autism, appropriate behavior management techniques. A group of undergraduate, teacher education students played the game and provided feedback on their experiences.

The increasing online access to courses, programs, and information has shifted the control and responsibility of learning process from instructors to learners. Learners' perceptions of and attitudes toward e-learning constitute a critical factor to the success of such system. The purpose of this study is to take TAM (technology acceptance model)…

Multimedia educational resources play an important role in education, particularly for distance learning environments. With the rapid growth of the multimedia web, large numbers of educational video resources are increasingly being created by several different organizations. It is crucial to explore, share, reuse, and link these educational…

The transition from classroom instruction to e-learning raises pedagogical challenges for university instructors. A controlled integration of e-learning tools into classroom instruction may offer learners tangible benefits and improved effectiveness. This design-based research (DBR) study engaged students in e-learning activities integrated into…

Purpose: Learning Chinese is unquestionably very important and popular worldwide with the fast economic growth of China. To most foreigners and also local students, one of the major challenges in learning Chinese is to write Chinese characters in correct stroke sequences that are considered as significant in the Chinese culture. However, due to…

An e-learning discussion forum, an essential component of today's e-learning systems, offers a platform for social learning activities. However, as learners participate in the discussion forum, privacy emerges as a major concern. Privacy concerns in social learning activities originate from one learner's inability to convey a desired presentation…

In the last decade, there has been a notable increase in the use of ICT in the development of teaching tools and, consequently, their integration in different disciplinary areas at different educational levels. University has not escaped this reality, and although most modern technological means are far from being available in every classroom--at…

Computer programming skills constitute one of the core competencies that graduates from many disciplines, such as engineering and computer science, are expected to possess. Developing good programming skills typically requires students to do a lot of practice, which cannot sustain unless they are adequately motivated. This paper reports a…

Recognition of students' facial expressions can be used to understand their level of attention. In a traditional classroom setting, teachers guide the classes and continuously monitor and engage the students to evaluate their understanding and progress. Given the current popularity of e-learning environments, it has become important to assess the…

In this paper, we present a framework for the development of collaborative design games that can be employed in participatory design sessions with students for the design of educational applications. The framework is inspired by idea generation theory and the design games literature, and guides the development of board games which, through the use…

This paper shows the results of a survey performed in Spain on the different functionalities of e-learning platforms. This survey was filled in by a group of teachers, experts in engineering education from across Spain, within the scope of the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education Society. This paper presents their opinions on several aspects of…

Many students have difficulty in learning abstract and complex lessons of chemistry. This study investigated how students develop their understandings of abstract and complex lessons in chemistry with the aid of visualizing tools: animation, simulation and video that allow them to build clear concepts. Animation, simulation and video enable…

Symbolic circuit analysis is a cornerstone of electrical engineering education. Solving a suitable set of selected problems is essential to developing professional skills in the field. A new method is presented for automatic validation of circuit equations representing a student's intermediate steps in the solving process. Providing this immediate…

This study explores the interactivity of course-management systems (CMSs). First, this study reviews the concepts of interactivity, interactivity dimension, and interaction type on the basis of related theories and studies. Second, this study analyzes the interactive functions attributable to the six major CMSs in Taiwan colleges and universities,…