Research about motivation indicates that a student's attention must be gained and sustained for learning to occur. As a result, motivational tactics, including adding interesting words, sounds and visuals to instructional materials, are commonly used by designers of instruction to trigger and sustain learners' interest and engagement…

In this volume a range of authors from different international contexts argue that the notion of communicative competence in English, hitherto largely referenced to metropolitan native-speaker norms, has to be expanded to take account of diverse contexts of use for a variety of purposes. It also discusses the popular belief that language and…

The aim of this study is to optimize CALL environments as a learning tool rather than a gloss, focusing on the learning of polysemous words which refer to spatial relationship between objects. A lot of research has already been conducted to examine the efficacy of visual glosses while reading L2 texts and has reported that visual glosses can be…

The authors investigate the potential of semantic web technologies to enhance "Virtual Fieldwork" resources and learning activities in the Geosciences. They consider the difficulties inherent in the concept of Virtual Fieldwork and how these might be reconciled with the desire to provide students with "authentic" tools for…

This study explored computer animation vignettes as a replacement for live-action video scenarios of classroom behavior situations previously used as an instructional resource in teacher education courses in classroom management strategies. The focus of the research was to determine if the embedded behavioral information perceived in a live-action…

Having used a quasi-experimental research model and the ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate) calibration method to gather and implement data, the researcher developed an interactive multimedia assisted learning (MAL) program promoting proper service attitudes in the hospitality industry. In order to gauge MAL program's…

The study investigates the use of different multimedia instructional design formats on learning. Undergraduate students from the College of Education at a public university in the United Arab Emirates were randomly assigned to groups corresponding to six instructional design formats, namely; Listen Only, Read Only, Read+ Listen, Listen + Graphics,…

Technological advances have created amazing opportunities for people throughout the world to access and share information. These opportunities have helped to create a generation of young adolescents who want to make the most of each minute of the day, seizing opportunities to seek information and communicate at the same time. This generation is…

Digital storytelling constitutes a pedagogical tool for teachers to work on different linguistic skills while generating students' interest and attention. This study analyses the usefulness of including digital storytelling within a didactic sequence in order to work on linguistic routines such as greetings and leave-takings in English as a…

Behind CALL teacher education (CTE) there is an unproblematized consensus of transfer, which suggests a positivist and tool-centered view of learning gains that differs from the sociocultural focus of recent teacher education research. Drawing on Beach's (2003) conceptualization of transfer as "consequential transition," this qualitative…

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine whether presenting a multimedia case study enhances the learning experience of students in an undergraduate management class. A questionnaire was administered before and after the presentation of the case study and the results showed that the multimedia case did indeed enhance the learning…

Two animations, one focused on the macroscopic phenomena and particulate conception of the three states of matter and the effects of heat on these states, and the other on solution formation and solubility were produced using Adobe Flash MX software. The first was designed for and tested on elementary school (3rd-5th grade) students. The second…

Educators increasingly support the use of computer-supported instruction in social studies education. However few studies have been conducted to study teacher use of computer-supported instruction in social studies education. This study was therefore designed to examine the use of exemplary social studies teachers' computer-supported instruction…

In physical education, task cards are often used in student-centred learning models. Consequently, a better understanding of how to deliver effective instructions by means of task cards would make a contribution to the literature. In this study, 80 right-handed university students in kinesiology were randomized across three experimental conditions…

In this article we outline our previous implementations of multilingual multimedia dictionaries and discuss possibilities for adding new functionalities and expanding their coverage. Independently developed sign language dictionary resources are further explored and considered for inclusion in an integrated multilingual multimedia dictionary with…