Within a European project on Networked Interaction in Foreign Language Acquisition and Research (NIFLAR), "Second Life" was used as a 3D virtual world in which language students can communicate synchronously with native speakers in the target language, while undertaking action together. For this context, a set of design principles for…

In this article the authors describe a collaboratively designed secondary teacher education program focused on the preparation of preservice general education teachers to work effectively with children who have diverse learning needs in inclusive classrooms. The focus of the article is on the collaborative development and initial evaluation of the…

In the present paper, the development and use of a specific set of pedagogical design principles in a large research and development project are analysed. The project (the Knowledge Practices Laboratory) developed technology and a pedagogical approach to support certain kinds of collaborative knowledge creation practices related to the…

Background: Globalization, technological advancement, environmental problems, etc. challenge organizations not just to consider cost-effectiveness, but also to develop new ideas in order to build competitive advantages. Hence, methods to deliberately enhance creativity and facilitate its processes of development must also play a central role in…

The purpose of this paper is to develop different guided writing strategies based on media richness theory and further evaluate the effects of these writing strategies on younger students' writing attitudes in terms of motivation, enjoyment and anxiety. A total of 66 sixth-grade elementary students with an average age of twelve were invited to…

Distance education has experienced profound changes due to the introduction of new technologies, especially mobile devices of different types. It is necessary to define new learning techniques which are able to capture students' attention and to engage them in their learning activities, reducing problems like distraction generated by the use of…

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is changing the way we build, operate, and maintain our software-intensive systems. Several projects using MDE practices are reporting significant improvements in quality and performance but, to be able to handle these projects, software engineers need a set of technical and interpersonal skills that are currently…

Based on a three-semester design research study, this paper argues the need to redesign online learning environments to better support the representation and sharing of factual, procedural, and conceptual knowledge in order for students to develop their design capabilities. A web-conferencing environment is redesigned so that the modalities…

As higher education moves increasingly to blended and fully online environments, smaller institutions often ask whether this is a desirable trend. They face many challenges in transforming their largely face- to-face didactic teaching traditions to the technology mediated learning environments. Learning effectiveness and student satisfaction are…

The principles of course redesign that were applied to a gateway Cell Biology course at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are applicable to courses large and small, and to institutions of any size. The challenge was to design a content-rich science course that kept pace with present and future content and at the same time use principles of…

Over the last decade, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), a form of narrative often involving multiple media and gaming elements to tell a story that might be affected by participants' actions, have been used in the marketing and promotion of a number of entertainment related products such as films, computer games and music. This paper discusses the…

This study investigated the change in the relationship between pedagogy, computer-use and students' perceptions about course-effectiveness over time. Students from a Canadian university completed a questionnaire in two different years (2003 = 1,834 participants and 2007 = 1,866 participants). Of greatest interest were characteristics of technology…

This study critically reviews the recently published scientific literature on the design and impact of adaptive and intelligent systems for collaborative learning support (AICLS) systems. The focus is threefold: 1) analyze critical design issues of AICLS systems and organize them under a unifying classification scheme, 2) present research evidence…

Instructional design refers to planning, development, delivery and evaluation of instructional system. It is an applied field of study aiming at the application of descriptive research outcomes in regular instructional settings. The present study was designed to critically review the process of instructional design at Allama Iqbal Open University…

Perceptions concerning training and development continue to appear in practitioner literature; however, the fact that those perceptions are not explored in HRD literature is a problem. The purpose of this study was to examine perspectives of participants in organization-sponsored training. A general qualitative methodology was utilized in this…