Electronic performance support systems (EPSSs) are the software programs commonly used in commercial environments since the early 1990s. These software programs are generally called performance-based systems and focus on the complete job rather than providing individual development. For that reason, the usage of these systems in learning…

This paper describes how a new "Moodle" module, called "CTPracticals", is applied to the teaching of the practical content of a basic computer organization course. In the core of the module, an automatic verification engine enables it to process the VHDL designs automatically as they are submitted. Moreover, a straightforward…

Online learning material that students use by themselves is one of the typical usages of algorithm animation (AA). Thus, the integration of algorithm animations into hypertext is seen as an important topic today to promote the usage of algorithm animation in teaching. This article presents an algorithm animation viewer implemented purely using…

Teaching programming concepts in a more object-oriented way is a growing trend in Computer Science education. This paper takes the idea of abstraction-first teaching a step further, by using Bloom's Taxonomy to design a course to present factual content early, followed by higher-level cognitive skills. In the course described here, factual content…

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the various ways in which pre-service and in-service teachers experience learning to program in an object-oriented language. Both groups of teachers were enrolled in university courses. In most cases, the pre-service teachers were learning to program for the first time, while the in-service…

A study was conducted to propose a research-based model for a longitudinal data research system that addressed recommendations from a synthesis of literature related to: (1) needs reported by the U.S. Department of Education, (2) the twelve mandatory elements that define federally approved state longitudinal data systems (SLDS), (3) the…

Software has an important role in supporting scientific work. This dissertation studies teams that build scientific software, focusing on the way that they determine what the software should do. These requirements engineering processes are investigated through three case studies of climate science software projects. The Earth System Modeling…

Recent years have seen a shift in focus from assessment of learning to assessment for learning and the emergence of alternative assessment methods. However, the reliability and validity of these methods as assessment tools are still questionable. In this article, we investigated the predictive validity of measures of the Pathfinder Scaling…

This paper introduces Ontoolsearch, a new search system that can be employed by educators in order to find suitable tools for supporting collaborative learning settings. Current tool search facilities commonly allow simple keyword searches, limiting the accuracy of obtained results. In contrast, Ontoolsearch supports semantic querying of tool…

The relative positions of the sun, moon, and earth, their movements, and their relationships are abstract and difficult to understand astronomical concepts in elementary school science. This study proposes a three-dimensional (3-D) virtual reality (VR) model named the "Sun and Moon System." This e-learning resource was designed by…

eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a new technology that is currently being extolled by many industry experts and software vendors. Potentially it represents a platform independent language for sharing information over networks in a way that is much more seamless than with previous technologies. It is extensible in that XML serves as a "meta"…

How do you dynamically customize the programming language available in a context within an existing system, without changing the underlying system? This dissertation introduces a language design approach that addresses this problem. The basic idea is to structure programs as systems of multiple interacting levels of abstraction, where all of the…

Personalization of user interfaces for browsing content is a key concept to ensure content accessibility. In this direction, we introduce concepts that result in the generation of personalized multimodal user interfaces for browsing XML content. User requirements concerning the browsing of a specific content type can be specified by means of…

Nowadays we need to teach students how to become flexible problem solvers in a dynamic world. The pace in which technology changes and complexity increases requires increased efficiency in learning and understanding. This requires the engineers of tomorrow to quickly gain knowledge and insight outside their prime area of expertise. To transfer…

This article proposes a VHDL language course that establishes a strong correlation between the language statements and their use in circuit synthesis. Two course modules are described: a basic module that contains the essential concepts of the language, sufficient for students to describe medium complexity circuits, followed by a second module…