Discusses the legacy of Toronto Canada's North York Board of Education's commitment to design quality, embodied in a series of schools from the 1990s. Several school designs, photographs, and floor plans are included, illustrating the Board's desire to combine durability and user satisfaction by embracing architectural quality. (GR)

The present study focuses on the relationship between the acquisition of design knowledge by novice design students and the quality of their designs. Design learning is typically based on action and reflection. Knowledge of solution processes, being part of this reflection, is found to be crucial in monitoring and controlling the design process…

Pursuant to Education Code 66903, the California Postsecondary Education Commission is charged with reviewing proposals for new academic and vocational programs at California's public colleges and universities and with making recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor. The Commission finds that the University of California's proposal to…

Online discussions have been increasingly integrated into face-to-face classes at universities to enhance student learning of course content. The primary focus of past research has been on the end products of online discussions. Studies reported either successful findings or results that fell short of desired learning outcomes. An in-depth…

This study discusses findings that replicate and extend the original work of Burns and Vollmeyer (2002), which showed that performance in problem-solving tasks was more accurate when people were engaged in a non-specific goal than in a specific goal. The main innovation here was to examine the goal specificity effect under both observation-based…

The main scientific problems investigated in this article deal with technical evaluation of quality attributes of the main components of e-Learning systems (referred here as DLEs--Digital Libraries of Educational Resources and Services), i.e., Learning Objects (LOs) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). The main research object of the work is…

This article describes an approach to developing student reading materials that support middle school learners in a project-based, inquiry curriculum for grades 6 through 8. Reading materials are designed to encourage sense making beyond the classroom, as students read and write about science as it takes place in a classroom and as it occurs in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review cross-disciplinary research on e-learning from workplace learning, educational technology, and instructional communication disciplines to identify relevant e-learning design principles. It aims to use these principles to propose an e-learning model that can guide the design of instructionally sound,…

Discussed are limits and constraints associated with the design of small urban parks located in such a way as to optimize use. Factors affecting design strategies and solutions are listed, and four major design strategies are examined. Specifically, strategies involve space, time, innovative designs, and municipal laws and by-laws. (RH)

A look at research from the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York, United Kingdom, on the design of spaces for learning. (HB)

Arguing that document design had its origins in the 1930s but that much of its development in theory, research, and practice has occurred in the 1980s, this paper provides a snapshot of the evolution of document design. The paper defines "document design" as the theory, research, and practice of creating comprehensible and persuasive…

A hearing was held to review problems posed by realistic toy guns and consider a bill to require manufacturers of toy firearms to distinctively mark the toy firearms as toys and a bill to ban realistic toy guns from commerce. A consumer advocate compared real and toy versions of several guns to demonstrate the difficulty of distinguishing one from…

This paper suggests that artists be involved in the international and governmental decision making, planning, and regulating activities associated with new communication systems and communication technologies. Eight projects sponsored by Experiments in Art and Technology illustrate artists' interest in, and ability to contribute to, a variety of…

Specifications for making adaptable dwelling units, minimally accessible designs which can later be inexpensively remodeled for the disabled, are presented. Advantages to providing many adaptable units rather than a few accessible ones are outlined, including eliminating the marketing problem, providing a disabled person with a wider choice of…

Speaking on the operating policies and procedures of computer data bases containing information on students, the author divides his remarks into three parts: content decisions, data base security, and user access. He offers nine recommended practices that should increase the data base's usefulness to the user community: (1) the cost of developing…