The current electronic text format is inherent to the problem of text integration, or, alternatively, cohesion deficit, which greatly affects reading comprehension. The question remains as to whether well structured hypertext would enable L2 readers, particularly ESL readers, to overcome potential difficulties in integrating information and…

Ten years ago, after 20 years as a university professor, I was asked to direct the teaching and learning support center at my university. I quickly realized I had almost no knowledge of the published scholarship on this subject. From my reading of this literature, I found the research on the predictors of student learning particularly informative.…

Adaptive LMS have not yet reached the eLearning marketplace due to methodological, technological and management open issues. At aDeNu group, we have been working on two key challenges for the last five years in related research projects. Firstly, develop the general framework and a running architecture to support the adaptive life cycle (i.e.,…

Instructional engineering provides methods to conduct the design and adaptation of competence development programmes by the combination of diverse learning components (i.e. units of learning, learning activities, learning resources and learning services). It occurs through an established process workflow in which models with diverse levels of…

Student assessment, in all its forms, is central to the educational process. In this paper in the series, "Bridging the Gap", I describe how assessment can be used as a powerful instrument for influencing how and what students learn and how and what instructors teach in a manner that is conducive to educationally sound curriculum change…

Given that many doctoral programs do not provide extensive training on how to present course information in the classroom, the current paper looks to educational psychology theory and research for guidance. Richard Mayer and others' copious empirical work on effective and ineffective instructional design, along with relevant research findings in…

Recent research on principles of best practice for designing effective multimedia instruction has rarely taken into account students' alternative conceptions, which are known to strongly influence learning. The goal of this study was to determine how well students of quantum mechanics could learn "vicariously" by watching a student-tutor dialogue…

Instructional design scholars have emphasized the development of theories and models more than the study of professional practice. Although both theoretical and practical knowledge are essential in a professional discipline, the field has not yet articulated the relationship between the two types of knowledge and how understanding this…

The underlying aim of the work related in this article, was to define Design Patterns for recording and analyzing usage in learning systems. The implied "bottom-up" approach when defining a Design Pattern brought us to examine data collected in our learning system through different lights: (1) the data type, (2) the human roles involved…

For the thirty-third 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 Anaheim, California. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two…

Mobile computing facilities may provide many assets to the educational process. Mobile technology provides software access from anywhere and at any time, as well as computer equipment independence. The need for time and place independence is even greater for medical instructors and medical students. Medical instructors are usually doctors that…

Readers will find several papers that address high-level issues in the use of technology in education, for example architecture and design frameworks for building online education materials or tools. Several other chapters report novel approaches to intelligent tutors or adaptive systems in educational settings. A number of chapters consider many…

Encouraging continuous improvement in the quality, scale and breadth of online education, the Sloan Consortium invites practitioners to share effective practices. This report synthesizes effective practices submitted by Sloan-C members to the online collection at http://www.sloanconsortium.org/effective as of November 2010. The synthesis includes…

This study explores factors that predict learner satisfaction and transfer of learning in an online educational program at a multinational corporation, established to improve organizational learning by providing training in technical skills. A mixed-methods design was used, selecting both quantitative methods (utilizing survey research) and…

This paper argues that if new communications technologies and online spaces are to yield "new relationship[s] with learners" then research that is tuned to recognize, capture and explain the pedagogical processes at the center of such interactions is vital. This has implications for the design of pedagogical activities within Initial…