Maintains that, with an average national television viewing time of more than seven hours daily, the prevalence of violence in broadcasts is a serious concern. Summarizes research on the effects of television violence on children. Includes eight suggested student activities to develop critical media skills. (CFR)

Discusses factors which influence performance when authoring multimedia instructional materials, including background knowledge, resource accessibility, learning and teaching styles, learning or job setting, access to expertise, performance support, cooperative learning, tutorials, models, online training, and expert guidance. (Contains six…

Describes a pilot project at the Colorado State University library that provided reserve materials electronically through microcomputers via a campus computer network at no cost to students. Topics discussed include programming; user-friendly menus for software; results of students' and professors' evaluations; copyright issues; and possible…

Describes a study that investigated the effects of visual display within a college computer-based learning program that taught computer programming language through analogies. Three types of visual displays (text, static graphics, and animation) are compared, and assessment measures that included posttests and attitude questionnaires are…

Surveys television cartoons for preschoolers to analyze how they present the female gender. Finds that infant, shrew, eccentric, mother, frump, vamp, and twin role models dominate; argues that these stereotypes limit children's imagination of other possibilities. Notes that the repertoire of female characters seems to have become more…

This special report includes five articles that discuss use of the World Wide Web in education. Highlights include higher Education uses, including linking faculty and students and what faculty need to put courses on the Web; a team approach to course development; using databases to support instruction; and enhancing Web-based instruction. (LRW)

Describes the use of C programming language for creating simple programs to teach about pendulums, waves, and frequency. (PR)

This study is concerned with the formal assessment of a Distance Learning Environment (DLE) created to deliver a course on UML sequence diagrams to university-level students, divided into control and treatment groups. An ad-hoc DLE was constructed to deliver instruction to the treatment group, while the control group was taught in a traditional…

There is a growing demand for advice about effective, time efficient ways of using ICT to support student learning in higher education. This paper uses one such area of activity--networked learning--as a context in which to outline a novel approach to educational design. The paper makes two main contributions. It provides a high level view of the…

Within a constructivist philosophy of learning, teachers, as students, are introduced to different perspectives of teaching with robotic technology while immersed in what Papert called a "constructionist" environment. Robotics allows students to creatively explore computer programming, mechanical design and construction, problem solving,…

This case study considered the syllabus of the first and second year studies in computer science. The aim of the study was to reveal which topics covered in the syllabi were really needed during the following years of study or in working life. The program that was assessed in the study was a Masters program in computer science and engineering at a…

This article describes research on the learning of object-oriented programming (OOP) by novices. During two academic years, we taught OOP to high school students, using Java and BlueJ. Our approach to teaching featured: objects-first, teaching composed classes relatively early, deferring the teaching of main methods, and focusing on class…

This paper examines issues of social difference and justice in a university international student center through a "cultural studies as praxis" model, which had been developed in the field of cultural studies and/in education by Handel Wright at the University of Tennessee (Wright 2001, 2001/2002). The model blends and hybridizes three…

The teaching of computing, like all subjects, requires a range of strategies to take the curriculum content (skills, knowledge, understanding and attitudes) and put it in a form that is more easily learned by students. Metaphor has a particular role in the world of computing: embedded in the design of computer hardware and software; part of the…

The introduction of an open-ended MicroWorlds based assignment in a pre-service teaching degree produced interesting results. Students engaged with the task at very high levels and produced work of high quality; so much so that marking trends were reversed. This paper explores the design and implementation of the task and how for many students it…