Serious games have a great potential for training and educating people in novel and engaging ways. However, little empirical research has been done on the effectiveness of serious games, and although early findings do point to a moderately positive direction, even less is known about why some games succeed in effectively educating while others do…

The Chinese National Quality Course Plan is a large-scale project by the Ministry of Education, which has led to the production of more than 12,000 courses from some 700 universities since 2003. This paper describes in detail the purpose of the project and how it is organized at all levels, including how individual courses get selected at…

Serious virtual worlds (SVWs) represent a great opportunity for learning and should embed a lot of high-quality contextualised information so that the player can take the most from his or her exploration of the environment. This requires defining new methodologies and tools for effective production. We have investigated this issue in implementing…

Presents a method for flexible instructional development which aims at assisting the educational designers in the development of modules that are easily adaptable to different learners' needs and allow learners' choices and different delivery platforms, including distance education. (AEF)

Examines how teachers from Nigerian secondary schools and teacher training colleges select instructional materials. Results of questionnaires and interviews from 89 teachers are analyzed, influences on teachers when selecting materials are described, and implications for instructional design are discussed. (22 references) (LRW)