Sustainable design is a philosophy adopted by people concerned with the health of society and the natural environment. The practice of sustainable design works toward the improvement of the quality of the built environment, while reducing or eradicating the negative impact on the natural environment (McLennan 2004). It is a philosophical approach…

As e-resource systems and web coordinator for Southern Oregon University, the author is deeply involved with the university library's website. In the latest revision of this website, the author knew she needed to jazz it up a little. With screen real estate on the main page at a premium, the author hoped to use a tabbed box and an accordion-style…

Art and art education are open to broader definitions in the twenty-first century. It is time that teachers seriously think about including built environment design in K-12 art education. The term "built environment" includes interior design, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning. Due to increased exposure to built environment…

The design of a utopia was devised as a studio project in order to bring critical thinking into the design studio and to stimulate creativity. By suggesting a utopia, the pedagogical aim was to improve progressive thinking and critical thought in the design education of architectural students -- and also future architects. From this perspective,…

Like the proverbial shoemaker's child who goes barefoot, many architecture students learn the best practices of their discipline in some of the worst buildings on their campuses. The problems with the newest architecture-school buildings, says the writer, are both similar and solvable. In a new book, teams of architecture faculty members and…

Effective assessment is vital in educational activities. We propose IWAS (intelligent Web-based assessment system), an intelligent, generalized and real-time system to assess both learning and teaching. IWAS provides a foundation for more efficiency in instructional activities and, ultimately, students' performances. Our contributions are…

The transition to a new architecture and design for an academic library Web site does not always proceed smoothly. In this case study, a library at a large research university hired an outside Web development contractor to create a new architecture and design for the university's Web site using dotCMS, an open-source content management system. The…

Although the quality, performance and future of public library services in the UK is a matter of debate, there is little doubt that in recent years, despite claims relating to the emergence of a cyber-society, interest in library buildings and the library as "place" has been intense, almost matching that seen during the Carnegie era of…

The design and implementation of remote laboratories present different levels of complexity according to the nature of the equipments operated by the remote laboratory, the requirements imposed on the accessing computers, the network linking the user to the laboratory, and the type of experiments the laboratory supports. This paper addresses the…

It wasn't that long ago that when education architects and administrators raised the notion of green construction or sustainable-design strategies, they were met with head scratches and raised eyebrows. But in 2009, the energy-saving, water-conserving, environmentally friendly philosophies championed by those in the vanguard of the green schools…

Hiring substitute teachers used to be an early-morning calling burden for staff members at schools in Oregon's Coos Bay School District. Now that work has been passed off to Aesop, a service from Frontline Placement Technologies, which springs into action upon receiving a notification, either by call or log-in, from a teacher reporting an absence.…

Contemporary education design strongly emphasises stimulating, adaptable learning environments, with spaces able to support various styles of teaching and learning. Delivering successful school buildings requires a close collaborative relationship between the architect and all key stakeholders from initial briefing through to project handover. The…

In spite of the goodwill and best efforts of software engineers and usability professionals, systems continue to be built and released with glaring usability flaws that are costly and difficult to fix after the system has been built. Although user interface (UI) designers, be they usability or design experts, communicate usability requirements to…

Using a two-step approach, Van Soest et al. (2010) recently questioned the pertinence of the conclusions drawn by Bootsma and Van Wieringen (1990) with respect to the visual regulation of an exemplary rapid interceptive action: the attacking forehand drive in table tennis. In the first step, they experimentally compared the movement behaviors of…

This essay explores the interplay between educational and architectural methodologies for analysing the school environment. It historicises the affinity between architectural and educational practices and modes of knowledge pertaining to the child's body during the period of postwar reconstruction in England to argue that educational spaces were…