This is the third in a series of studies examining young students' attitudes toward and knowledge about computers. Data were collected at the end of students' third and fourth grade academic years and analyzed with respect to their "love" of computers, their feelings of competence in using them, and the number of computer terms they…

Theoretical foundation of Response mechanisms in networks of online learners are revealed by Statistical Analysis of p* Markov Models for the Networks. Our comparative analysis of two networks shows that the minimal-effort hunt-for-social-capital mechanism controls a major behavior of both networks: negative tendency to respond. Differences in…

This study tested the effects of linguistic qualifiers and intensifiers on the number and types of replies elicited per argument and per challenge posted in online debates. To facilitate collaborative argumentation, thirty-two students (22 females, 10 males) enrolled in a graduate-level online course classified and labeled their messages as…

This paper addresses additional requirements associated with implementing a standard curriculum of Management Information Systems (MIS) in bilingual developing countries where both students and workplace users speak English as a second language. In such countries, MIS graduates are required to develop bilingual computer applications and to…

Three years ago, the language lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison encountered the same challenge many campuses face. Older analog technologies were getting harder--in some cases impossible--to maintain, thus making the move to digital technologies a necessity. A typical solution would have been to digitize existing materials and substitute…

Distance education has been one of the hottest and most controversial topics in higher education circles for approximately the past 10 years. It has been viewed at once as the panacea for educating the world and that which, through its inherent depersonalization of the academic process, will destroy higher education "as we know it." This article…

After reviewing the literature on interaction in distance education/online learning contexts, I offer some suggestions for balancing students' and teachers' needs for greater interaction with the economies of scale often achieved in such learning contexts. Specifically, I suggest that instructors' use of threaded online discussions and student…

In this paper, we suggest that case-based resources, which are used for assisting cognition during problem solving, can be structured around the work of narratives in social cultural psychology. Theories and other research methods have proposed structures within narratives and stories which may be useful to the design of case-based resources.…

The current project linked students in three universities in a guided discussion of the movie, "Three Kings." The goals were to assess the viability of having students from three different courses, in three different universities, in three different countries find common ground to have intellectual discussions via the Internet and to…

This study examined the effects of a Web site design project on students' motivation and achievement. Tenth-grade biology students worked together in teams on an ecology project that required them to locate relevant information on the Internet, decide which information should be included on their Web site, organize the information into Web pages,…

Traditional instructional methodology in the Information System Design (ISD) environment lacks explicit strategies for promoting the cognitive skills of prospective system designers. This contributes to the fragmented knowledge and low motivational and creative involvement of learners in system design tasks. In addition, present ISD methodologies,…

To mark New England Board of Higher Education's (NEBHE) 50th anniversary year, "Connection" invited a small group of visionary commentators to submit short "statements" on the future of New England's economic and civic development, tomorrow's technologies and the changing shape of higher education. This article includes the…

These proceedings contain the papers of the International Conference e-Learning 2013, which was organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society and is part of the Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (Prague, Czech Republic, July 23-26, 2013). The e-Learning 2013 conference aims to…

This symposium presentation comprises five papers about the efforts of a consortium of three Iowa liberal arts colleges (Clarke College, Loras College, and the University of Dubuque) to develop a critical social perspective in its teacher preparation curriculum. An introduction by Michael Vavrus defines critical social perspective as a critical…

This paper describes how rural school districts can use educational technology to evolve into learning communities that meet the learning needs of all community members. The story of a fictitious small rural school district illustrates how the role of education can be expanded through technology. The superintendent developed a distance education…