This article presents a design of educational software employing group competition using a large interactive electronic whiteboard, and a report on its experimental use. Group competition and collaboration are useful methods to cultivate originality and communication skills. To share the same space, the same large screen, and face-to-face…

SchoolhealthLink, a Web-based information service for Missouri school nurses, is a promising resource to reach school nurses isolated from traditional professional networks. It also may serve as an important adjunct to stay abreast of the latest health information. Using a strategy to identify the health information needs of school nurses and to…

Infant crying signals distress to potential caretakers who can alleviate the aversive conditions that gave rise to the cry. The cry signal results from coordination among several brain regions that control respiration and vocal cord vibration from which the cry sounds are produced. Previous work has shown a relationship between acoustic…

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…

This article focuses on the changing concepts of the university student and teacher, of learning and teaching, and of the university as such because of the use and integration of electronic learning environments. This mode of digital learning implies important changes in established practices in which students and teachers inevitably take part.…

Research in integrated learning systems has demonstrated a need for rigorous studies that identify how such systems influence learning, and in particular that of low achieving students. No Child Left Behind legislation mandated evidence-based interventions as the standard for instructional approaches in American public schools. This…

Software testing is a crucial component in the development of good quality systems in industry. For this reason it was considered important to investigate the extent to which the Information Systems (IS) syllabus at the University of Cape Town (UCT) was aligned with accepted software testing practices in South Africa. For students to be effective…

This report provides a two-part evaluation of the IntelliMetric[SM] automated essay scoring system based on its performance scoring essays from the Analytic Writing Assessment of the Graduate Management Admission Test[TM] (GMAT[TM]). The IntelliMetric system performance is first compared to that of individual human raters, a Bayesian system…

This paper reviews a series of formative assessment studies that were conducted to inform and evaluate a large-scale instructional software development project at the University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR). The three-year project, entitled "Taking the Next Step in Engineering Education: Integrating Educational Software and Active Learning,"…

Using content analysis, this study evaluated the aging content and context in 11 nutrition sub-specialty textbooks: community nutrition (n = 3), diet therapy (n = 4), and nutrition and aging (n = 4). Pages with paragraphs on aging were identified in community nutrition and diet therapy textbooks, and 10% random samples of pages were evaluated in…

Preparatory to establishing a computer services program for residents, Presbyterian Homes, a multi-campus continuing care retirement community, conducted an assessment of residents' computer needs, ownership, and usage. Based on the results of the needs assessment, computer resource rooms were established at each facility, with computer hardware…

This paper presents a study in which we examined spelling mistakes made by 34 learners of German in an online CALL exercise. We analyzed a total of 374 spelling errors that occurred in 341 words and subsequently classified them along four dimensions: (a) competence versus performance, (b) linguistic subsystem, (c) language influence, and (d)…

This study examined the impact of a word prediction software program, Co:Writer, on the written output of 24 students with physical disabilities that affected their ability to write by hand. Surveys were completed by both students who used Co:Writer and their teachers/adult supporters in schools, and 10-minute writing samples were obtained from…

Appropriately timed Focus on Form can help in raising the learners' language awareness. In this paper we argue that the learner's own text composition progression can indicate when a learner is ready to notice a particular language form. Stimulated recall induced discussion was used to provoke explicit writer comments relating to noticing and…

According to the dichotomy popularized by Levy (1995, 1997), computers may be used in language learning in either tutor or tool roles. Recently there has been a waning of interest in tutorial software for language learning in favor of tool-oriented applications. While we do not dispute the value of the computer as a tool, we argue that it is in…