The tutorship program is aimed at supporting students throughout their university career and its objective is to prevent future problems of adaptation in the educational ambience as well as intervening in matters of academic achievement. At the Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora (Technological Institute of Sonora) (ITSON), the individual tutorship…

This study details the experiences from a pilot program aimed at virtually pairing pre-service teacher education candidates with fifth-grade students for the purposes of raising achievement and creating meaningful field experiences. Researchers paired the difficulties of traditional field experiences with the difficulties in vocabulary…

Automation of power systems is gaining momentum across the world, and there is a need to expose graduate and undergraduate students to the latest developments in hardware, software, and related protocols for power automation. This paper presents the design, development, and commissioning of an automation lab to facilitate the understanding of…

The practical work component offers unique challenges for university science courses. This is even more pertinent in an Open and Distance Learning (ODL) environment like the Bindura University of Science Education's Virtual and Open Distance Learning (VODL) programme. Effective ODL education should be flexible enough to accommodate science…

hapTEL, an interdisciplinary project funded by two UK research councils from 2007 to 2011, involves a large interdisciplinary team (with undergraduate and post-graduate student participants) which has been developing and evaluating a virtual learning system within an HE healthcare education setting, working on three overlapping strands. Strand 1…

This paper proposes extensive applications of virtual collaborative space in order to enhance the efficiency and capability of Digital Campus. The usability of Digital Campus has been experimented in different learning environments and evaluated by questionnaire as that the presence technology and a sense of solidarity influence the participants'…

This study reports on the pedagogic rationale, didactic design and implications of an AHRC-funded doctoral training scheme in collaborative and digital multimedia in the humanities. In the second part of this article we discuss three areas of provision that were identified as particularly significant and/or controversial. These include (1) desktop…

Eight teams of elementary and middle school teachers developed pilot online courses for the North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) in the USA. A qualitative case study with focus groups and a follow-up survey helped to identify common needs of these non-traditional course designers during course development efforts. Findings suggest virtual…

This article presents the results of a three-year study of "Gamestar Mechanic" (www.gamestarmechanic.com), a flash-based multiplayer online role-playing game developed for the MacArthur Foundation's digital media learning initiative by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Gamelab in New York. The game's objective is to help children…

This paper describes a multi-user role-playing environment, referred to as "e-drama", which enables groups of people to converse online, in scenario driven virtual environments. The starting point of this research, is an existing application known as "edrama", a 2D graphical environment in which users are represented by static…

Negotiation skills are essential in everyday life, whether in a professional or personal context. Negotiation enables two parties to address misunderstandings and avoid conflicts through an exchange that depends as much on the interpersonal skills of the negotiators as the tactics employed. Acquiring these skills requires not only sound conceptual…

Spatial abilities are fundamental to human functioning in the physical world. Spatial reasoning allows people to use concepts of shape, features, and relationships in both concrete and abstract ways, to make and use things in the world, to navigate, and to communicate. Surgeons, pilots, architects, engineers, mechanics, builders, farmers, trades…

In this paper, ULearn (University of Surrey learning on-line) and e-learning techniques are used to enhance the students' understanding and participation in Dynamics modules for an undergraduate programme in the School of Engineering, University of Surrey. The Dynamics modules are taught at Levels 2 and 3 and contain several mechanisms and…

A team designing a Web-enhanced third-year medical education didactic curriculum based their course planning and evaluation activities on the Institute for Higher Education Policy's (2000) 24 benchmarks for online distance learning. The authors present the team's blueprint for planning and evaluating the Web-enhanced curriculum, which incorporates…

Online learning is growing rapidly across the United States within all levels of education, as more and more students and educators become familiar with the benefits of learning unconstrained by time and place. Across most states and all grade levels, students are finding increased opportunity, flexibility, and convenience through online learning.…