The move to providing flexible delivery of university subjects and courses urged by government policy raises a number of issues for support staff. Whatever "flexible learning" might mean, there are hardware, software, training and attitudinal issues which are central to the work of support staff. This paper will address some of the…

Continuing professional education seems to be particularly suited to the online environment with opportunities to communicate anywhere anytime. This appears to be convenient and time efficient for the busy working professional. The views of practising professionals were sought and form the basis of this paper. Primary care physicians at two…

The use of a synchronous audio tool is discussed for teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) in Taiwan. Over several months, a community of practice has formed among teachers and teaching assistants, transcending cultural differences. Exploring the relationship that has developed between teachers and teaching assistants forms the basis of this…

This article suggests that it is time for sociologists to redirect their focus from critiques of policy makers' unrealistic visions for information and communication technologies (ICTs) to the more generic issues that consistently mobilise resistance to ICTs within schools and education systems. There is an extraordinary difference between young…

This article is aimed at educators who find themselves facing the need to develop their e-teaching skills, with little or no formal training or institutional support. It explores how this can be achieved using the notion of "teacher autonomy" in combination with standard professional development measures for language teachers. The…

Information has become an increasingly valuable commodity. Access to full-text information, containing text, images, and in some cases, sound, is becoming vital to decision-making for organizations as well as individuals. The book covers the following topics: (1) the information marketplace in a cyberculture; (2) the telecommunications foundation…

This volume provides information on 434 institutions which offer academic credit for 4,176 media-assisted courses. Institutions include: colleges and universities, consortiums, public broadcasting stations, and statewide telecommunications services. The book includes a brief foreword that relates some of the history of distance education; an…

As this report shows, the growth in the use of computers and other educational technologies has been substantial and accelerating during the past 15 years. The report summarizes Quality Education Data's 15th annual survey of public school ownership of instructional technology, covering more than 65% of all United States schools and districts--over…

The ever-increasing availability of electronic information resources online and on CD-ROM presents library media specialists, teachers, and students with a new set of challenges for accessing information. Electronic information resources enable access to nonlinear information, which allows searchers to explore relationships and make connections…

This paper synthesizes issues related to the Internet, Internet curriculum materials (i.e., any type of teaching material or activity that can be incorporated into the K-12 curriculum and is available on the Internet), and constructivist learning theory; it explores the use of the Internet as a constructivist environment for learning and the…

This document offers a view of educational change that has educational technology at the center of the process and underscores some of the contributions educational technology can make to reforming education in Saskatchewan (Canada). The province has an excellent teaching force and communities that value education highly, but there is a prevailing…

At the University of Birmingham, Information Services, together with the Staff Development Unit and the Learning Development Unit have been working together to set up a number of initiatives to support staff to use WebCT to underpin its learning and teaching strategy within a flexible framework. The framework seeks to invest in developing…

The Blackboard Learning System™, a Web-based server software system, is widely used on many college and university campuses today. This paper explores the use of the Blackboard system as a teaching and learning tool. Particular emphasis is placed on the online chat feature available through the Blackboard interface. During the fall 2002 pilot…

Course management software enables faculty members to learn one software package for web-based curriculum, assessment, synchronous and asynchronous discussions, collaborative work, multimedia and interactive resource development. There are as many as 109 different course management software packages on the market and several studies have evaluated…

For the twenty-fifth year, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the National AECT Convention in Dallas, TX. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two volumes.…