Communicating with prospective students has undergone a profound transformation in the past ten years. Campus marketing--like marketing for any organization--had to adapt first to the Internet and e-mail and now to new social media formats like social networking and blogging. A recent survey of 1,000 college-bound seniors, however, shows that…

Library Web sites must compete against easy-to-use sites, such as Google Scholar, Google Books, and Wikipedia, for students' time and attention. Library Web sites must therefore be designed with aesthetics and user perceptions at the forefront. The Music and Performing Arts Library at Urbana-Champaign's Web site was overcrowded and in much need of…

Describes a study that investigated whether similar or different navigational profiles emerge for younger readers of hypertext documents. Results indicated that both adult and adolescent readers use the same navigational profiles, but differences are linked to the level of exposure to a given domain rather than experience in navigating computer…

Web site usage statistics are a widely used tool for Web site development, but libraries are still learning how to use them successfully. This case study summarizes how Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale implemented Google Analytics on its Web site and used the reports to inform a site redesign. As the main campus library at…

By having subjects drive a virtual taxicab through a computer-rendered town, we examined how landmark and layout information interact during spatial navigation. Subject-drivers searched for passengers, and then attempted to take the most efficient route to the requested destinations (one of several target stores). Experiment 1 demonstrated that…

The Wilderness Education Association (WEA) helps people enjoy and protect the nation's most precious resource: the wilderness areas. The WEA has been training and certifying outdoor leaders around the world for nearly 30 years, teaching students safely and effectively to lead groups in the outdoors without harming the environment. This document…

Teacher education programs are designed to provide candidates opportunities to explore effective ways to teach K-12 students mathematics. Although many of these experiences engage candidates in investigations of pedagogies using technology, manipulatives, media, etc., they often only involve and emphasize more formal experiences such as…

Interactive learning environments (ILEs) are increasingly used to support and enhance instruction and learning experiences. ILEs maintain and display information, allowing learners to interact with this information. One important method of interacting with information is navigation. Often, learners are required to navigate through the information…

This study sought to better understand search performance using an online portal containing a collection of heterogeneous library resources for K-12 students. Search performance is examined in terms of search success, search time, strategy, and effort. This study revealed unsuccessful searches tended to take longer than successful searches;…

One of the major features of a computer based instruction (CBI) is its non-linear structure allowing learners the opportunity of flexible navigation to accommodate their own needs. However, this non-linear structure may cause problems such as inefficient navigation, being lost or cognitive overhead for some learners. The aim of this study is to…

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder associated with severe visuocognitive impairment. Individuals with WS also report difficulties with everyday wayfinding. To study the development of body-, environment-, and object-based spatial frames of reference in WS, we tested 45 children and adults with WS on a search task in which the participant…

Field instruction is a critical piece of undergraduate geoscience majors' education, and fieldwork remains a major part of the work of professional geologists. Despite the central importance of field education, there exists relatively little educational research exploring how students learn to solve problems in geological fieldwork. This study…

Delaware Technical and Community College online courses are not properly focused to ensure instructors are effective in improving student achievement. First time online students are not given the proper tools when navigating online courses at the college. The focus at Delaware Tech should be on improving the format which students use when…

This article presents the text of the author's presidential address, delivered at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 22, 2009. For the author, the title of this president's address, "Sailing over the Edge: Navigating the Uncharted Waters of a World Gone Flat," calls to…