The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. The following papers are included in the 2013 proceedings: (1) Teaching About Asia in a Social Science Education Program (Cyndi Mottola Poole and Joshua L. Kenna); (2) Teaching Students about…

The mission of the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) is to increase educational opportunities and enhance learning by providing collegial expertise and leadership in K-12 online teaching and learning. "National Standards for Online Course Quality" is designed to provide states, districts, online programs, and other organizations…

With the release of the fourth edition in the annual "Horizon Report, the New Media Consortium (NMC) has undertaken a concerted, international effort to describe a research agenda and call to scholarship based on the six practices and technologies featured in the report. The community was invited to participate in this process, contribute to the…

No one graduating from school can any longer have the illusion to have completed her or his learning career, nor to live in a monocultural society. Quite on the contrary, learning will be the major business of the professional future of anyone who now leaves school. Moreover, the multicultural nature of current societies constitutes an additional…

Computer-mediated conferencing has been adopted, particularly for purposes of online course provision, as a method that can deliver community. Widespread interest in a communities-of-practice approach within both informal and formal learning has strengthened perceptions of the value of creating a community online. A case study of asynchronous…

This article explores the development and evaluation of the graduate-level Early Childhood Development Virtual University (ECDVU) programme in Sub-Saharan Africa from 2001 through to 2004. It outlines the history of the ECDVU and the establishing of a Sub-Saharan programme for future leaders in the early childhood field guided by the key principle…

This article provides guidance for meeting the educational needs of "learners on the periphery"--those learners who traditionally have been disenfranchised by formal education because of the structure and nature of face-to-face courses but who now may be returning to higher education due to the promises of the online classroom. The guidance comes…

The calls for the transformation of how science is taught (and what is taught) are numerous and show no sign of abating. Common amongst these calls is the need to shift from the traditional teaching and learning towards a model that represents the social constructivist epistemology. These calls have coincided with the Internet revolution. Through…

Pharmacology is taught on a dedicated module for nurse prescribers who have a limited physical science background. To facilitate learning a problem-based approach was adopted. However, to enhance students' knowledge of drug action a PharmaCALogy software package from the British Pharmacological Society was used. Students were alternately given a…

This study investigates how students and their teacher experience online courses and whether both parties perceive similar advantages and disadvantages in online learning. Both parties consider geographical independence advantageous and express the need for a well-structured course; this includes the administration as well as the content.…

This paper elaborates on the importance of a strategic foundation when digital learning or knowledge management (KM) solutions are planned and developed. It looks at some key issues of e-Learning and knowledge management (KM) through discussing the various stages (technologies) and potential benefits of e-Learning; the state of the e-Learning…

The evolution of the World Wide Web service has incorporated new distributed multimedia conference applications, powering a new generation of e-learning development and allowing improved interactivity and prohuman relations. Groupware applications are increasingly representative in the Internet home applications market, however, the Quality of…

Multimedia data and application systems accessible over the Web are valuable assets for developing instructional materials for teaching, training, problem solving, and decision support. These assets can be used to construct learning objects, each of which is a reusable granule of instruction designed to meet a specific instructional objective. In…

This paper reports the results of a research project investigating the use that Distance Education (DE) students at university make of the learning materials that are supplied to them. The research is based on a survey of 998 DE students enrolled in ten undergraduate subjects spread across all five Faculties at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in…

Is creative teaching something new? Is it not true that teachers have always found creative ways of making their teaching more creative, engaging and effective for their students no matter what century they were in and that includes those in the 21st century? It would appear therefore that "there is nothing new under the sun." However,…