The development and teaching of Web-based courses places new demands on university faculty and students. Development structures, online pedagogical practices, and issues of evaluation are presented by two faculty with online experience in the areas of visual impairment and orientation and mobility. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Critics of distance education frequently assert that completion rates are lower in distance education courses than in traditional courses. Such criticism comes despite sparse and inconclusive research on completion rates for distance and traditional education courses. This article reviews some of the existing research and then describes some of…

This article describes and evaluates a new alternative: distance-based training using live video and audio courses transmitted via the Internet. This alternative may address each of the problems described above, that is, it may provide a distant expert who selects and delivers training to paraprofessionals in a cost efficient manner. Because the…

In this paper we discuss the development and implementation of a questionnaire that measures preparedness to teach secondary school science with information and communication technologies (ICT). The questionnaire was designed for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of instruction in a science education unit in a Graduate Diploma teacher…

Background: Many of the agent-based products available to education today have been largely confined to games and instructional media that are often produced commercially by non-instructional professionals. Most of them lack customizability and are difficult to integrate into individual subject curriculum. With more agent authoring tools available…

This paper examines ways in which coherent reasoning about key concepts such as variability, sampling, data, and distribution can be developed as part of statistics education. Instructional activities that could support such reasoning were developed through design research conducted with students in grades 7 and 8. Results are reported from a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate ESL instructors' feedback techniques and the rationales behind these techniques, to explore ESL students' beliefs about the relative effectiveness of various types of feedback, and to compare students' beliefs with those of their instructors. A university-level ESL instructor and two of her students…

CALL evaluation might ideally draw on principles from fields such as second language acquisition, language pedagogy, instructional design, and testing and measurement in order to make judgments about criteria such as elaborated input, feedback, collaborative learning, authentic tasks, navigation, screen design, reliability, validity, impact, and…

Whilst the potential of online Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) in terms of access, immediacy and exposure is widely acknowledged, as yet remarkably little is known about its impact on the user population, be they language teachers or learners. Indeed, beyond its technological development, online CALL design is still affected by a dearth…

Four integrated learning management packages were reviewed: "CentraOne", "IntraLearn", "Lyceum", and "Silicon Chalk". These products provide different combinations of synchronous and asynchronous tools. The current report examines the products in relation to their specific value for distance educators and students.

In spite of the dramatic increase in the volume of information on computer technology in social work, very little has been written about how this technology might be incorporated into existing curricula. What is needed is an overview of how computers have been used in social work practice and in educational settings that can serve as a starting…

American children continue to be less physically active than they were a decade ago. Web-based programs (e-Learning), requiring minimal teacher training and expertise, could contribute to improvements in children's health-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the e-Learning module…

Up to this point, university education has largely remained unaffected by the developments of novel approaches to web-based learning. The paper presents a principled approach to the design of problem-oriented, web-based learning at the university level. The principles include providing authentic contexts with multimedia, supporting collaborative…

The Ministry of Higher Education in the Sultanate of Oman initiated recently a restructuring program for the General Directorate Colleges of Education aiming to replace the existing six colleges with more applied and highly IT assisted institutions. A particular emphasis is directed towards improving the learning methods by developing and…

The purpose of this study was to compare traditional classification training for a set of abstract concepts with multiple-relations training consisting of inference practice and the use of a content diagram. To examine this, 200 undergraduate and graduate psychology students completed a Web-based tutorial covering the abstract concepts of a…