The "emerging educational institutional decision-making matrix" is developed to allow educational institutions to adopt a rigorous and consistent methodology of determining which of the myriad of emerging educational technologies will be the most compelling for the institution, particularly ensuring that it is the educational or pedagogical but…

The marketing department of a large business school introduced a new undergraduate course, marketing metrics and analysis. The main materials for this course consisted of a series of online spreadsheets with embedded text and practice problems, a 32-page online metrics primer that included assurance of learning questions and a sample examination…

Based on a framework of identity-as-narrative and multiliteracies, this article describes "Graphic Journeys," a multimedia literacy project in which English learners (ELs) in middle school created graphic stories that expressed their families' immigration experiences. The process involved reading graphic novels, journaling, interviewing, and…

Online learning space design becomes a significant issue with the proliferation of online learning in higher education. Never before has the instructor been given such a privilege in building and molding the learning space to fulfill his/her instructional aspirations. However, enormous challenges are present to the instructor in taking advantage…

Mainly used in the 1960s, bubble chambers played a major role in particle physics. Now replaced with modern electronic detectors, we believe they remain an important didactic tool to introduce particle physics as they provide visual, appealing and insightful pictures. Sadly, this rare type of detector is mostly accessible through open-door events…

Mobile Learning (M-Learning) is an approach to E-Learning that utilizes mobile devices. Learning Management System (LMS) should enable M-Learning. Unfortunately, M-Learning is not the same at each educational institution. Assessment is one of the learning activities that can be achieved electronically and via mobile device. Mobile assessment…

Descriptive statistics and appropriate visual representations of scores are important for all test developers, whether they are experienced testers working on large-scale projects, or novices working on small-scale local tests. Many teachers put in charge of testing projects do not know "why" they are important, however, and are utterly convinced…

Open source software has become a catchword in libraryland. Yet many remain unclear about open source's benefits--or even what it is. So what is open source software (OSS)? It's software that is free in every sense of the word: free to download, free to use, and free to view or modify. Most OSS is distributed on the Web and one doesn't need to…

If a person is on a presentation and he/she does not know how to go back to a previous PowerPoint slide, his/her credibility will be clouded and the audience will become frustrated. More sophisticated presenters use handheld remotes to control the basic navigation of slides. Even in this case, keyboard shortcuts can be an added benefit. For those…

An item model serves as an explicit representation of the variables in an assessment task. An item model includes the "stem", "options", and "auxiliary information". The "stem" is the part of an item which formulates context, content, and/or the question the examinee is required to answer. The "options" contain the alternative answers with one…

Individualized feedback is an important factor in fostering learning. However, it is often not seen in schools because providing it places considerable additional workload on teachers. One way to solve this problem is to employ critiquing systems. These systems, however, require significant development effort before they can be put into use. In…

More than ever, teachers are using digital video to enhance their lessons. In fact, the number of schools using video streaming increased from 30 percent to 45 percent between 2004 and 2006, according to Market Data Retrieval. Why the popularity? For starters, video-streaming products are easy to use. They allow teachers to punctuate lessons with…

A federal jury in Texas awarded Blackboard Inc. $3.1-million last month, saying that a smaller Canadian competitor, Desire2Learn Inc., had infringed Blackboard's patent for a system of delivering course materials online. The case has been closely watched by campus-technology officials, many of whom feared that a Blackboard win could stifle…

Collaborative learning environments provide a set of tools for students acting in groups to interact and accomplish an assigned task. In this kind of systems, students are free to express and communicate with each other, which usually lead to collaboration and communication problems that may require the intervention of a teacher. In this article,…

Measures of rifle marksmanship skill and performance were developed using a prototype instrumented laser-based training system. Measures of performance were derived from laser strikes on a video-projected target. Measures of rifle marksmanship skill--breath control, trigger control, and muzzle wobble--were developed from shooters' breathing and…