Success in open educational resources (OER) has been reported by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the USA and the Open University in the UK, among others. It is unclear, however, how valuable OER are in learning and teaching. Approaches to OER policy and sustainability are just two other key aspects that remain unresolved across the…

Based on Competence Motivation Theory (CMT), a Moodle course for schoolchildren's table tennis learning was developed (The URL is http://www.bssepp.com, and this course allows guest access). The effects of the course on students' knowledge, perceived competence and interest were evaluated through quantitative methods. The sample of the study…

Since the nonprofit CK-12 Foundation in 2007 pioneered the idea of a flexbook as "a free and open-source textbook platform where one can build and edit collaborative textbooks," the availability and use of flexbooks has become more mainstream. There is no doubt that as an educational resource, flexbooks are highly versatile and flexible,…

Approximately 15 states are changing their policies to give school districts more flexibility in acquiring content. They have changed laws or policies or have bills pending in state legislatures to redefine "textbooks". Most of those changes are similar to the approach Indiana took in its new law: a "textbook" is not only a…

Landman Library is two-thirds of the way through a three-stage process of migrating to the Koha open-source integrated library system (http://koha-community.org). We are an academic library with roughly 143,000 volumes, six professional librarians, and three support staff. The migration to open source was driven by the desire to access our own…

Students will cheat during exams, that is nothing new, but now that the Higher Education Act requires the proctoring of exams, distance education institutions now find that both they and their students have a major problem. Exams have to be proctored, but requiring distance education students to search out a reliable proctor and travel to a…

The demands on academic staff in all sectors to adopt best ODL practices to create effective and efficient models of learning in the face of increasing external pressures show no signs of abating. The massification of higher education, diversified access, and pressures to meet institutional visions and research objectives demand of teaching staff…

Less than half of the students in the United States graduate from high school and are ready to take college-level math courses. Many years and varieties of remedial math programs have failed to dramatically improve outcomes, especially at scale. The question we face is whether technology in general, and open educational resources in particular,…

This dissertation aims to investigate how advanced information technologies cope with the various demands of disaster response. It consists of three essays on the exploration of micro-blogging and FOSS environments. The first essay looks at the usage of micro-blogging in the aftermath of the massive 2008 China earthquake and explores the…

The development in information technology has now moved from the first wave that emphasises on computer technical skills to the second wave which focuses on the application and management aspects. This paper aims to investigate the use of learning management system among future school heads in education management and leadership. The study was…

The study deals with the development of an analogy-integrated e-learning module on Cellular Respiration, which is intended to facilitate conceptual understanding of students with different brain hemisphere dominance and learning styles. The module includes eight analogies originally conceptualized following the specific steps used to prepare…

This paper reports on a controlled experiment on the effects of three types of reflection triggers in an online course. Fifty-four volunteers, distributed in five groups, used these structured opportunities for reflection during learning. Results show that reflection triggers were extensively employed by the test persons and were perceived as…

In this article, the author talks about the education technology journey and a future driven by disruptive change. The author first provides a definition of disruptive change. To understand the potential for disruptive change in higher education--a disruption fueled by technology and related trends--the author begins with a look at the past and…

The past several decades have been times of widespread change in world economies. The 21st century has witnessed scientific technological innovations that have had an impact on almost every sector of our social institutions and the way we do things. To succeed in these changing economies and secure meaningful employment, STEM literacy and…

Since the term "learning object" was first published, there has been either an explicit or implicit expectation of reuse. There has also been a lot of speculation about why learning objects are, or are not, reused. This study quantitatively examined the actual amount and type of learning object use, to include reuse, modification, and translation,…