The use of video in teaching and learning is a common practice in education today. As learning online becomes more of a common practice in education, streaming video and audio will play a bigger role in delivering course materials to online learners. This form of technology brings courses alive by allowing online learners to use their visual and…

The relationship between attention to linguistic form and accuracy or to meaning and fluency in language learning has been explored by language learning researchers for many years. They point to the potential difficulties for learners in attending to form and meaning at the same time and the importance of exposure to meaningful target language…

This article describes research on the learning of object-oriented programming (OOP) by novices. During two academic years, we taught OOP to high school students, using Java and BlueJ. Our approach to teaching featured: objects-first, teaching composed classes relatively early, deferring the teaching of main methods, and focusing on class…

This article reviews recent policies and government initiatives that have aimed to improve the uptake of vocational qualifications amongst hard-to-reach groups in the working population. The Employer Training Pilots and the Sector Skills Pilots have been designed to trial new ways of engaging employers in training and encouraging the take-up of…

A major issue confronting educators is the extent to which they wish to conform to so-called paradigm shifts in teaching and learning. In the contemporary world of tertiary education these shifts embrace both pedagogy (from instructivist to constructivist) and technology (from classroom to online). As teachers and learners are faced with the…

Teamwork skills such as conflict resolution and communication strategies are challenging to teach. The use of stories may help develop these complex skills. Although engagement is generally seen as a key component of learning environments, what constitutes engagement has not been fully explored. The purpose of this study was to examine how…

Collaborating closely with a 10th-grade science teacher, we designed a Web-based learning environment (Web-LE) to improve student motivation to learn science. Factors believed to enhance intrinsic motivation (challenge, control, curiosity, and fantasy) were integrated into the instructional design of the Web-based learning tool. The Web-LE was…

Case study methodology was used in combination with a participatory action research (PAR) approach to examine the process of redesigning one high school science course to incorporate the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and to promote access to the general curriculum. The participants included one general education teacher and two…

This paper provides an overview of the Inquiry-Oriented Differential Equations (IO-DE) project and reports on the main results of a study that compared students' beliefs, skills, and understandings in IO-DE classes to more conventional approaches. The IO-DE project capitalizes on advances within mathematics and mathematics education, including the…

This paper addresses the concept of blended learning, an approach that has been gaining popularity in recent years with the advancement of computer-mediated training solutions. It begins with an effort to define blended learning and a description of its historical context. A discussion of blended learning as a learner-centric approach follows,…

Future Directions in Distance Learning and Communication Technologies presents theoretical studies and practical solutions for engineers, educational professionals, and graduate students in the research areas of e-learning, distance education, and instructional design. This book provides readers with cutting-edge solutions and research directions…

In this paper, we discuss the role of the educator in terms of designing a learning environment for the student which encourages the student to develop their own academic integrity. In such an environment, there is no need for the student to resort to plagiarism, as the learning and assessment tasks are not conducive to cheating, being unique and…

Survey data from 174 university students are presented, on a scale designed to measure preference for absolute knowledge and perspective in instruction, including online discussions. Results demonstrate a strong effect of class level such that students in lower grade levels reported a greater preference for instruction involving unambiguous…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose an electronic support tool that can be used by teacher educators and novice teachers to foster habits of reflective, systematic instructional planning. Design/methodology/approach: The authors provide a rationale for their work, present a theoretical framework, propose a unique instructional design…

Considering the increasing importance of enterprise systems in business, and their pedagogical value in demonstrating business process orientation and concepts of integration, several universities have incorporated popular enterprise system (ES) software products such as SAP R/3 into their business school curricula. This paper describes an attempt…