Thinking Together is a project that began at the Open University in the mid 1990s and grew out of research that showed that children benefit from explicit instruction on how to talk in groups. Its fundamental premise is that the ability to communicate effectively is a key skill that lies at the heart of educational success. A crucial goal arising…

Automated Essay Scoring (AES) is defined as the computer technology that evaluates and scores the written prose (Shermis & Barrera, 2002; Shermis & Burstein, 2003; Shermis, Raymat, & Barrera, 2003). AES systems are mainly used to overcome time, cost, reliability, and generalizability issues in writing assessment (Bereiter, 2003; Burstein,…

While it has become common to employ pronunciation oriented software to improve one's pronunciation in L2, both language teachers and L2 learners feel uncertain about choosing software to meet their purposes. Taking "MyET", pronunciation oriented software written and highly praised in Taiwan, as a representative program, this study…

This article presents findings from a comparative case study of the learning experiences of two graduate students in an online action research course. The key roles played by reflection and co-reflection, an emerging concept, are identified through the use of narrative analysis. Co-reflection is a collaborative critical thinking process mediated…

Many of the information security appliances, devices, and techniques currently in use are designed to keep unwanted users and Internet traffic away from important information assets by denying unauthorized access to servers, databases, networks, storage media, and other underlying technology resources. These approaches employ firewalls, intrusion…

Detecting and combating plagiarism from Web-based sources is a concern for administrators and instructors involved in online distance education. In this paper, we quantify copy-and-paste plagiarism among adult learners in an online geography course offered through Penn State's World Campus Geographic Information Systems (GIS) certificate program.…

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has tremendous potential for being a tool that can connect students to post school opportunities not yet known. The technology is robust and well developed, used by many workplaces and integral in a nation's future well-being and defence. However, despite many isolated attempts by teachers to incorporate GIS…

The objective of this paper is to introduce a standards-based model for adaptive e-learning and to investigate the conditions and tools required by authors to implement this model. Adaptation in the context of e-learning is about creating a learner experience that purposely adjusts to various conditions over a period of time with the intention of…

The DIN Didactical Object Model extends the approaches of existing Educational Modeling Languages introducing specifications for contexts and experiences. In this paper, we show how the Didactical Object Model can be used for sharing didactical expertise. Educational Modeling Languages change the design paradigm from content orientation towards…

Research into the behaviours manifested by the dyslexic condition has often focused upon younger dyslexic pupils and the lower-order skill difficulty in decoding and encoding. A surge in interest in the writing process has shifted the focus to higher-order skills, and a growing body of research is emerging within the higher education context…

Educating students to understand overt, subtle, and erroneous claims made by partisan advertisers is no small feat. Often students are passive consumers who need to learn how to become critical listeners, viewers, readers, and producers of all types of media. Because of this, media literacy--the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and produce…

Universities are quickly moving from brick and mortar toward online classroom settings. The online setting provides students with increased accessibility and flexibility to attend classes they would normally be unable to attend. Unfortunately, for those students who never attend classes on campus, many campus resources are not accessible. Students…

Lack of accessibility in the design of e-learning courses continues to hinder students with vision impairment. E-learning materials are predominantly vision-centric, incorporating images, animation, and interactive media, and as a result students with acute vision impairment do not have equal opportunity to gain tertiary qualifications or skills…

This conference proceedings presents abstracts, complete papers, and author biographies for the 1994 Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO) annual symposium on human factors in computer-assisted language learning (CALL), specifically the actual use of software by the human learner and teacher. Presented topics included…

To help students learn to navigate the information superhighway, a 2-hour pilot program with 10 hours of guided access time was developed to test a method for teaching the basics of maneuvering the superhighway and extracting information once located. This pilot was designed as a two-part instructional session. The first instructional session…