This three-year Virtual Measurements Environment curriculum development project for higher education within the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union is the result of intense collaboration among four institutions, teaching applied sciences and technology. It aims to apply the principles and possibilities of evolved distance and…

Sustainability has been identified as one of the most pressing challenges for business and society. However, research shows that sustainability topics are still not given sufficient attention in higher education, particularly in the undergraduate business curriculum. This paper offers a template for an interdisciplinary, team-taught undergraduate…

Schools are increasingly integrating multidisciplinary education into their programmes. The Minister of Education, Culture and Science has introduced a new, integrated science subject in secondary education in the Netherlands, called Nature, Life and Technology (NLT). This research note describes the design of a generic model for a professional…

This paper reports on a pilot investigation into web conferencing in a distance learning module. It focuses on the perceptions and experiences of the tutors, all of whom were new to the web conferencing environment, but were experienced in online teaching. A number of web conferencing tutorials were studied through the collection of various…

Cooperative learning has been sufficiently studied to be accepted as an effective method of education. Student reception of cooperative learning, and therefore the degree of its success in a given situation, will depend on the mode of delivery. New technology for delivering courses totally online challenges many aspects of traditional education,…

The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), a small nonprofit considered to be the intellectual center of the technology-based course transformation movement, has labored mightily and with much success to help more colleges bring their undergraduate courses into the modern age. But it has labored precisely because colleges have yet to…

This paper presents findings of a study that evaluated the instructional effectiveness of a problem-based learning module constructed around a computer simulation, "Making Change Happen"[TM]. The "Leading Organizational Change" (LOC) course sought to enable students in a graduate management program in Thailand to learn to lead…

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer-assisted emergency preparedness course for school nurses. Participants from a convenience sample (52) of school nurses from New Mexico were randomly assigned to intervention or control groups in an experimental after-only posttest design. Intervention group participants…

Personalized medicine refers to medical care that involves genetically screening patients for their likelihood to develop various disorders. Commercial genome screening only involves identifying a consumer's genotype for a few single nucleotide polymorphisms. A phenotype (such as an illness) is greatly influenced by three factors: genes, gene…

This paper identifies a set of universal instructional design (UID) principles appropriate to distance education (DE) and specifically tailored to the needs of instructional designers and instructors teaching online. These principles are then used to assess the accessibility level of a sample online course and the availability of options in its…

This completely computer-based module's purpose is to introduce students to bioinformatics resources. We present an easy-to-adopt module that weaves together several important bioinformatic tools so students can grasp how these tools are used in answering research questions. Students integrate information gathered from websites dealing with…

The authors sought to better approximate the practice of "real" science in our classrooms by having students study a newly built storm-water remediation wetland on campus. The wetland was meant to gather and clean storm water running off of student parking lots--thus students had ownership in the problem and potential solution. Participating…

Communication Skills Training (CST) is a proven aid to help oncologists achieve high quality patient-centered communication. No research studies have provided clear guidelines for developing the content of CST. The aim of this work is to describe a method of developing such content and evaluation of effectiveness of CST training workshops (based…

In recent years the student population in the UK has grown considerably, and students are entering higher education with a more diverse range of qualifications and skills. This is particularly the case in post-1992 universities with a widening participation agenda, as these institutions have a larger share of students from non-traditional…

The Association of American Geographers' Center for Global Geography Education (CGGE) offers online learning modules that support international collaborations in post-secondary geography with the aim of promoting international dialogue on relevant geographic issues. Through the module's collaborative learning activities, students have an…