The development of Design and Technology curricula has always been premised on the importance of the act of designing and of the value of the contingent activity of creative thinking. Despite this, there has been a great deal of uncertainty about methods for developing creative thinking abilities in design and technology students. However, the…

This exploratory study examines ho wan Internet-assisted design game succeeds in bringing forth children's own visions for the environment where they live and their definitions of a good environment. Two connected concepts in environmental psychology, the theory of person-environment fit and the concept of affordances, are applied in the analysis…

Even as weblogs, content management systems, and other forms of automated Web posting and journals are changing the way people create and place content on the Web, new Web pages mushroom overnight. However, many new Web designers produce Web pages that seem to ignore fundamental principles of "good design": full of colored backgrounds, animated…

As in other regions, development on many New England campuses over the past 30 years has tended to be more random than planned. Following the same patterns of sprawl that have defined most development in today's era, the placement of new campus buildings often separated them from the life of the university, while a hodgepodge of architectural…

Computer aided assessment is a common approach used by educational institutions. The benefits range into the design of teaching, learning, and instructional materials. While some such systems implement fully automated marking for multiple choice questions and fill-in-the-blanks, they are insufficient when human critiquing is required. Current…

As one of the important stakeholders in the academic process, students and their preferences should be considered when the instructor selects the various course design features. Although students are not the only stakeholders in the academic process, their receptiveness to classroom instruction is clearly a central focus of that process. This…

Federal legislation requires that all students, including students with disabilities, be included in all state and district-level accountability systems. Many students can take the regular assessment with or without accommodations, but some students with disabilities need alternate ways to access assessments. For the past several years, states…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the hypothesis that it is fruitful to study new areas within research for sustainability, through experimental education courses, that are based on international and multilateral (transcultural) learning processes. Design/methodology/approach: This way of introducing education into open research…

This study explores the relationship between art object preferences and aesthetic attitudes of high school students. A corollary variable was socioeconomic status as determined by the National Opinion Research Center scale. A sample of 443 students, grades 8-12, in a Virginia high school, were studied. The 5-point Aesthetic Attitude Scale was used…

This paper addresses problems and issues that arise in electronic communications, and offers guidelines and etiquette. Topics covered include: (1) drafting an electronic message, including width of messages, abbreviations and smileys, salutation, name, author address, and responding to a message; (2) "Webtiquette" (i.e., guidelines for…

In order to discover reader reactions to color on a newspaper page, specifically eye movement and overall opinion of the paper, identical pages were created and printed by the "St. Petersburg Times" (Florida). The content of fifteen front pages, six lifestyles pages, and three sports front pages were nearly identical, differing only in the kind…

Using data from a previous study, this study investigated the adoption of modern graphic design techniques by daily newspapers. A scale of modern design was constructed from available literature and tested for internal validity by determining what design practices were included in sample papers. The scale was then used to test assumptions about…

Many typographers have already decided that sans serif type is more pleasing to readers and more functional than traditional roman type. The findings of this study, which was designed to assess the readability of, and reader preference for, these two styles, lead to the opposite conclusion. To determine preferences, 200 subjects of various ages…

This speech discusses the evaluation and selection of competitive products for schools, and recommends that user specifications be written to include user requirements. The author maintains that product evaluation would be easier if specifications writers would use more performance tests to interpret the user requirements and anticipated…

Presents a technique for assessing elderly residents' priorities and desired environmental characteristics for in-unit activities. Considered three components in design priority for activities: time spent, unit adequacy, and importance. Residents' high priority activites were sleeping, watching television, preparing food, resting, and eating. (NRB)