Building joint-use libraries to foster new types of learning and collaboration is a growing phenomenon that is of great interest to academic library planners around the world. Noteworthy among these efforts, the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in San Jose, California, is a collaboration of a metropolitan university library and a major public…

Over the past six years, the University of Utah libraries have developed an extensive international presence through digital resource sharing. Services include instruction, electronic document delivery, shared catalogs, and full-text databases. This paper will describe the process of establishing, extending, and improving these services through…

The goal of this project is to develop a unique simulation environment that can be used to increase students' interest and expertise in Computer Science curriculum. Hands-on experience with physical or simulated equipment is an essential ingredient for learning, but many approaches to training develop a separate piece of equipment or software for…

Although many nations are struggling with social studies, especially when addressing basic goals, ideas of citizenship, and developing and understanding global perspectives, it is New Zealand that provides an interesting case regarding social studies for social efficacy and global understanding. In this article, the author investigates the…

From an Invitational Education perspective, e-learning will only succeed as an educative environment if educators are able to provide an e-learning environment that preserves dignity and encourages communication. The converse: using an online environment to "throw information" at students has the opposite effect; it is experienced as deeply…

This article contains a description of a network-based Learning Environment Organizer entitled LEO, which takes its impetus from the Assimilation Theory of meaningful learning. LEO represents a new approach to computer-mediated augmentation of face-to-face, or hybrid courses, and a different approach to distance learning course delivery. LEO…

At some point, most education administrators must make difficult decisions because of fluctuating student enrollment. In the past, they might have spent months collecting student and facility data, hand-counting student population in certain areas, and driving throughout their communities to find available and affordable land for new school sites.…

This section describes the systemic change experiences in Norfolk Public Schools, Chugach School District, Indianapolis Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township, Ditmas Educational Complex, Georgia Systemic Teacher Education Program, Sun Microsystems, and Azerbaijan. It provides a description of the change process and discusses the…

In this article, the author pays tribute to Cecilia Braslavsky by reviewing writings, interviews, and articles authored exclusively by her. Cecilia was a source of inexhaustible inspiration, not only because of her ideas and writings, but because of the force of her convictions and passion with which she tackled the work of researching, teaching,…

In this study, we investigated the effect of type of positive interdependence (roles, rewards, roles-plus-rewards, or no structure) and affiliation motives (high vs. low) in an asynchronous, collaborative learning environment. College reentry students worked together in small, fully online discussion groups that lasted for seven days. Results…

This study was designed to examine the effects of the competency (low vs. high) and interaction type (proactive vs. responsive) of pedagogical agents as learning companions (PALs) on learning, self-efficacy, and attitudes. Participants were 72 undergraduates in an introductory computer-literacy course who were randomly assigned to one of four…

In Hong Kong and Canada, indeed globally, slogans about learning to learn and teaching for 21st-century knowledge and skills are common. However, there are few examples of how teacher education courses or programs are responding to these new demands. In this paper, we propose a framework for designing teacher education premised on the theoretical…

Educational authorities in many developed countries are funding the development of online environments that aim to facilitate teacher professional learning through collegial, reflective sharing of practice. But is this a case of "if we build it they will come"? Are teachers ready to share ideas and experiences in online communities of…

The purpose of this study was to measure pre-service teachers' attitudes toward information technology (IT) after completing a discrete IT course taught in a student centred-learning (SCL) environment during laboratory sessions. Evidence from this study suggests that there was a positive shift in the participants' attitudes toward IT. Pre-test…

There is increasing interest in the use of animated agents in e-learning environments. However, empirical investigations of their use in online education are limited. Our aim is to provide an empirically based framework for the development and evaluation of animated agents in e-learning environments. Findings suggest a number of challenges,…