This paper describes the development of nQuire, a software application to guide personal inquiry learning. nQuire provides teacher support for authoring, orchestrating, and monitoring inquiries as well as student support for carrying out, configuring, and reviewing inquiries. nQuire allows inquiries to be scripted and configured in various ways,…

The support of technological resources in teaching and learning has contributed to make them more efficient and enjoyable. Through this support has become quite common to use media resources before explored only for entertainment for educational purposes, among them the TV. The interactive Digital TV (iDTV) provides resources that make possible…

In teaching software engineering, it is often interesting to introduce real life scenarios for students to experience and to learn how to collect information from respective clients. The ideal arrangement is to have some real clients willing to spend time to provide their ideas of a target system through interviews. However, this arrangement…

OpenMx is free, full-featured, open source, structural equation modeling (SEM) software. OpenMx runs within the "R" statistical programming environment on Windows, Mac OS-X, and Linux computers. The rationale for developing OpenMx is discussed along with the philosophy behind the user interface. The OpenMx data structures are…

The rise of apps and mobile devices has opened the door to small, dedicated software programs that are focused on singular tasks. From the author's perspective as head of digital access and web service manager at Montana State University, these apps offered an opportunity to build a focused digital service aimed at allowing someone to enter a…

The REQS package is an interface between the R environment of statistical computing and the EQS software for structural equation modeling. The package consists of 3 main functions that read EQS script files and import the results into R, call EQS script files from R, and run EQS script files from R and import the results after EQS computations.…

The authors present a learning platform based on a computer game. Learning games combine two industries: education and entertainment, which is often called "Edutainment." The game is realized as a strategic game (similar to Risk[TM]), implemented as a module for Moodle CMS, utilizing Java Applet technology. Moodle is an open-source course…

Sharing user information between systems is an area of interest for every field involving personalization. Recommender Systems are more advanced in this aspect than Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) and Intelligent Learning Environments (ILEs). A reason for this is that the user models of Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Intelligent Learning…

The latest researches adopted software technology to improve pointing performance; however, Drag-and-Drop (DnD) operation is also commonly used in modern GUI programming. This study evaluated whether two children with developmental disabilities would be able to improve their DnD performance, through an Automatic DnD Assistive Program (ADnDAP). At…

This study examined the impacts of educational interface agents with different attributes on achievement, attitude and retention of elementary school students in their science and technology courses. The study was implemented in four different eighth- grade classes (aged 13-14) of an elementary school. Four different types of educational software,…

Introduction: This article reports on a study that explored the benefits and drawbacks of using spatially positioned synthesized speech in auditory interfaces for computer users who are visually impaired (that is, are blind or have low vision). The study was a practical application of such systems--an enhanced word processing application compared…

In today's society, educational opportunities have evolved beyond the traditional classroom setting. Most universities have implemented virtual learning environments in an effort to provide more opportunities for potential or current students seeking alternative and more affordable learning solutions. "User-Centered Design Strategies for…

The purpose of this paper is to familiarize instructional designers and researchers with a useful design and research paradigm known as "Ask Systems." Ask Systems are interrogative interfaces to information and learning environments that model conversations with a skilled, reflective practitioner (Schon, The reflective practitioner, "1983") or…

Single Display Groupware (SDG) allows multiple people in the same physical space to interact simultaneously over a single communal display through individual input devices that work on the same machine. The aim of this paper is to show how SDG can be used to improve the way resources are used in schools, allowing students to work simultaneously on…

This study explores whether learning management systems (LMSs) enable faculty course developers to use the reconfigurable characteristics of the software to implement the seven principles of effective teaching (Chickering & Gamson, 1987). If LMSs are to be considered pedagogically effective, these systems must help engage faculty in effective…