The author reviews various ways personalized learning has come to be interpreted and asserts that rather than requiring we create individualized learning plans for each student, true personalization requires that teachers give learners the tools, knowledge, skills, and dispositions to manage themselves and their learning environment. Teachers…

Implementing online technologies alone cannot ensure learning. A verified approach is needed to optimize the pedagogical effect of online learning. Previous studies have suggested that the application of the modality principle in multimedia design improves the efficiency of learning by reducing cognitive load. Nevertheless, this design approach…

A course design question for self-paced courses includes whether or not technological measures should be used in course design to force students to follow the sequence intended by the course author. This study examined learner behavior to understand whether the sequence of student assignment submissions in a self-paced distance course is related…

Recent developments and new directions in education have emphasised learners' needs, profile and pedagogical aspects by focusing on learner-centered approaches in educational settings. e-Learning, on the other hand, guarantees learners the opportunity of learning in their own way, and leads to new considerations in course design. e-Learning is…

This article presents two current research trends in e-learning that at first sight appear to compete. Competence-Based Knowledge Space Theory (CBKST) provides a knowledge representation framework which, since its invention by Doignon & Falmagne, has been successfully applied in various e-learning systems (for example, Adaptive Learning with…

"Present text accompanying pictures aurally to promote learning" is a well established principle of instructional design. But recently, it was shown that under certain conditions visual texts can be preferable. Instructional pacing seems to be one of these conditions that mediate effects. Especially, enabling learners to pace an…

Research findings in recent years provide compelling evidence of the importance of encouraging student control over the learning process as a whole. The socially based tools and technologies of the Web 2.0 movement are capable of supporting informal conversation, reflexive dialogue and collaborative content generation, enabling access to a wide…

In its second decade of education reform and its third cycle of national ICT master plans, Thailand struggles to transform its aspirations into practice. This paper chronicles three decades of Thailand's ICT national plans and their relation to education reform. It also discusses the effect of global trends, Asian cultures, and Thai cultures on…

In educational environments, it is desirable to support the mechanism by which people can participate in interesting communities without any trouble and also to promote successful learning activities. Now that Web-based environments have been successively organized under a virtualized communication network or a logical interaction space, the…

To prepare diverse learners for various roles in life, teachers should develop contextualized learning environments that enable students to develop individual skills while contributing to the knowledge of the classroom community. This is accomplished by integrating various subject matter domains with interdisciplinary themes that incorporate…

Student-centered learning environments provide interactive, complimentary activities that enable individuals to address their unique learning interests and needs, examine content at multiple levels of complexity, and deepen understanding. This paper provides a brief overview of learning environments and identifies the foundations and underlying…

This paper deals with the design of an integrated system for Web-based distance education (ISWBDE). At the highest level, this system can be dissected into two sub-systems: an integrated course authoring system (ICAS) and an integrated course delivery system (ICDS). The ICAS is designed to help with, or automate the creation and management of…

This paper describes an online technology course at Middle Tennessee State University that meets the needs of many preservice teachers and models techniques that can be applied in their K-12 classrooms. The first section describes the self-pacing online technology approach, including the following components of the online model: World Wide…

Focuses on instructional and learning systems in distance education. Highlights include: learner-centeredness of distance education; instructor's role; relevant content to individual needs; balancing roles of instructors and learners; personalizing instruction; ramifications for instructional and learning system design; and architecture of dynamic…

Young children are active learners who touch, feel, experiment, and create. Learning centers are designed to relate to their world of active learning and to encourage their involvement, thereby enhancing development of choice making, oral language, creativity, social skills, responsibility, and understanding of symbols. This book includes…