This article reports on the ATLAS project, which addressed the problem of poor recruitment to university courses in the less widely taught (LWT) languages. The results of a survey of school students' attitudes towards learning languages and towards using the web were used to help design a website to encourage students to consider taking up a new…

In July, 2005, the European Institute of Chemistry and Biology at the campus of the University of Bordeaux, France, hosted a focused week of seminars, workshops, and discussions around the theme of "teaching signal transduction." The purpose of the summer school was to offer both junior and senior university instructors a chance to…

Learning performance assessment aims to evaluate what knowledge learners have acquired from teaching activities. Objective technical measures of learning performance are difficult to develop, but are extremely important for both teachers and learners. Learning performance assessment using learning portfolios or web server log data is becoming an…

Educational software for teachers is an important, yet usually ignored, link for integrating information technology into classroom instruction. This study builds a web-based teaching material design and development system. The process in the system is divided into four stages, analysis, design, development, and practice. Eight junior high school…

Evaluation activities provide vital information on which to base planning and implementation decisions related to today's rapidly changing educational environment. This article discusses the context of and rationale for the rigorous, well-planned evaluation of online courses and programs; differentiates among evaluation, assessment, and research;…

The objective of this paper is to introduce a standards-based model for adaptive e-learning and to investigate the conditions and tools required by authors to implement this model. Adaptation in the context of e-learning is about creating a learner experience that purposely adjusts to various conditions over a period of time with the intention of…

Starting from the first public draft of IMS Learning Design in November 2002, a research project at the Catholic University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt in Germany was dedicated to the conceptual examination and empirical review of IMS Learning Design Level A. A prototypical runtime environment called "lab005" was developed. It was built based…

With the increasing prevalence of Internet-based courses in higher education, it is important to examine students' experiences to provide an optimal learning environment. This research found that students reporting positive attitudes about their online course experience exhibited attributes of constructivist learners, including self-direction.…

The purpose of this study was to develop guiding principles to encourage higher levels of teaching and learning in Web-based distance education. The research framework used Zetterberg's (1962) model for change. Data from semi-structured interviews with university instructors who had experience in teaching Web-based distance education courses, a…

With the advances in Internet technologies, online education is fast gaining ground as an extension to traditional education. Webcast allows lectures conducted on campus to be viewed by students located at remote sites by streaming the audio and video content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. However when used alone, webcast does not provide…

This review provides a comprehensive examination of the literature surrounding the current state of K-12 distance education. The growth in K-12 distance education follows in the footsteps of expanded learning opportunities at all levels of public education and training in corporate environments. Implementation has been accomplished with a limited…

Changes in higher education frequently involve the need for more flexibility in course design and delivery. Flexibility is a concept that can be operationalized in many ways. One approach to conceptualizing flexibility within courses is to distinguish planning-type flexibility, which the instructor can designate before the course begins and which…

Although substantial literature exists regarding learning with visuals, most consider text the primary channel with varying amounts of visuals explored as a secondary channel. This study considered the effectiveness of visuals-only procedural guides versus visuals plus added text, using visuals as the primary channel and using visuals developed…

The purpose of this study was to examine the student performance and student satisfaction in two courses offered by the University of Minnesota to in-service career and technical education teachers who were preparing to teach occupational programs at the high school or technical college level. The study compared the student performance and…

At the University of Cambridge, UK, we have developed, used, and evaluated a new exercise in Process Dynamics and Control incorporating a Web-based experiment physically located at MIT. We describe the experimental equipment, the interface used, the new exercise, and report on the student evaluation. The successful realization of this exercise…