The incorporation of advanced information and communication technologies into the field of education has made the design and deployment of courses and instructional units more and more complicated. In order to support such complex task, methods and techniques have been proposed in the last years for the standardization, formalization and modelling…

In this paper we present a model for designing professional courses in a blended learning context as a tool to help the interaction between students, teachers and learning resources. This model aims to promote new concepts, new approaches and new strategies that have been changing the paradigm of teaching and learning. To develop a course based on…

Game-based learning harnesses the advantages of computer games technology to create a fun, motivating and interactive virtual learning environment that promotes problem-based experiential learning. Such an approach is advocated by many commentators to provide an enhanced learning experience than those based on traditional didactic methods.…

Nowadays we need to teach students how to become flexible problem solvers in a dynamic world. The pace in which technology changes and complexity increases requires increased efficiency in learning and understanding. This requires the engineers of tomorrow to quickly gain knowledge and insight outside their prime area of expertise. To transfer…

This article proposes a VHDL language course that establishes a strong correlation between the language statements and their use in circuit synthesis. Two course modules are described: a basic module that contains the essential concepts of the language, sufficient for students to describe medium complexity circuits, followed by a second module…

Compared to other subjects, the typical introductory programming (CS1) course has higher than usual rates of both failing and high grades, creating a characteristic bimodal grade distribution. In this article, I explore two possible explanations. The conventional explanation has been that learners naturally fall into populations of programmers and…

This chapter states and explains that a Learning Design is the result of a knowledge engineering process where knowledge and competencies, learning design and delivery models are constructed in an integrated framework. We present a general graphical language and a knowledge editor that has been adapted to support the construction of learning…

Recently, a lot of open source e-learning platforms have been offered for free in the Internet. We thus incorporate the intelligent diagnosis and assessment tool into an open software e-learning platform developed for programming language courses, wherein the proposed learning diagnosis assessment tools based on text mining and machine learning…

Modern information technology and computer science curricula employ a variety of graphical tools and development environments to facilitate student learning of introductory programming concepts and techniques. While the provision of interactive features and the use of visualization can enhance students' understanding and assist them in grasping…

Discusses the effect of object-oriented programming on the evolution of authoring systems. Topics include the definition of an object; examples of object-oriented authoring interfaces; what object-orientation means to an instructional developer; how object orientation increases productivity and enhances interactivity; and the future of courseware…

In this paper, we present an ontology to represent the semantics of the IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) specification, a meta-language used to describe the main elements of the learning design process. The motivation of this work relies on the expressiveness limitations found on the current XML-Schema implementation of the IMS LD conceptual model. To…

The paper describes an ontology-based framework for bridging learning design and learning object content. In present solutions, researchers have proposed conceptual models and developed tools for both of those subjects, but without detailed discussions of how they can be used together. In this paper we advocate the use of ontologies to explicitly…

The objective of this paper is to introduce a standards-based model for adaptive e-learning and to investigate the conditions and tools required by authors to implement this model. Adaptation in the context of e-learning is about creating a learner experience that purposely adjusts to various conditions over a period of time with the intention of…

Web Based Distance Learning (WBDL) is a form of distance learning based on providing instruction mainly on the World Wide Web. This paradigm has limitations, especially the lack of interactivity inherent in the Web. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the technologies the authors have used in their courses at Florida Atlantic…

This paper introduces "Collage", a high-level IMS-LD compliant authoring tool that is specialized for CSCL (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning). Nowadays CSCL is a key trend in e-learning since it highlights the importance of social interactions as an essential element of learning. CSCL is an interdisciplinary domain, which…