This article provides an analysis of the current method of accommodating students with disabilities in social work education and presents a new framework for providing universal access to all students in social work education: Universal Instructional Design (UID). UID goes beyond adapting already developed social work curricula to fit the needs of…

Kerr wrote of the black box of design decisions--that time when the "heart of an instructional solution first appears." Petroski writes of judgment as indispensable for engineering design decisions. Both instructional design and engineering are design sciences, yet engineering has a rich tradition of discussing and reflecting upon design…

In this paper we focus on interactive visualizations that support mathematical investigation. In the context of analyzing and redesigning an interactive visualization from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics's (NCTM's) Illuminations Web site, we consider two interrelated issues: (1) how the pedagogy of mathematical investigation may be…

In higher education, different instructors who teach the same course may vary the instructional paths, pace, and depth of the content. These variations may result in different performances among learners. The intent of this research is to design a course management system that aggregates appropriate course units based on maximum consensus among…

This article investigates conditions for increasing active participation in on-line communities. As a case study, we use three generations of facilities designed to promote learning in the area of Educational Modelling Languages. Following a description of early experience with a conventional web site and with a community site offering facilities…

Brigham Young University's Center for Instructional Design (CID) creates online courses and multimedia instructional applications for university faculty. This paper asserts that including usability testing as a part of evaluation improves the quality and effectiveness of computer-mediated instruction. The paper describes the fundamental purpose…

Online courses have been criticized for their focus on knowledge acquisition rather than on how to solve authentic complex problems, a skill that is increasingly being recognized as critical to meeting the challenges in the real world. The purpose of this study was to explore whether between-group collaboration in project-based online courses can…

Can computers help with one of the most persistent challenges of large classes: the accurate and efficient measurement of student learning?

A case is made in this paper for using checklists and contextbound evaluations of online learning materials in higher education. Contextbound evaluations complement traditional forms of evaluation of educational courseware, such as checklists. Contextbound approaches are useful for indicating the pedagogical quality of online learning materials…

"Everything in instructional design has to do with layers," said Dr. Andrew S. Gibbons. In the Jan/Feb 2003 issue of "TechTrends," Dave Wiley used Dr. Gibbons' "excellent thinking on layers" to make the distinction between an instructional medium and an instructional strategy. These authors use Dr. Gibbons' idea about layers in design again--to…

This paper describes our use of the ADDIE protocol to design and develop an interactive tutorial for students learning molecular symmetry operations and point groups. The tutorial provides a 3-D environment where students can examine molecules, structures, and symmetry elements. Most such tutorials are connected to courses or instructors in…

This article describes the instructional design theoretical foundation of a desktop virtual reality-based learning environment aimed at complementing the current novice driver education system in Malaysia. It provides an elaboration of how various components of the learning environment are designed to support this theoretical underpinning that…

This article outlines the evolution of a unique distance education program that began as a hybrid--combining face-to-face instruction with asynchronous online teaching--and evolved to become an innovative combination of synchronous education using live streaming video, audio, and chat over the Internet, blended with asynchronous online discussions…

Using the methodological framework of conversation analysis (CA) as a central tool for analysis, this study examines a peer interactive task that occurred in a Japanese as a foreign language classroom. During the short segment of interaction, the students shifted back and forth between the development of an assigned task and the management of…

A Delphi method was used to determine the extent to which current educational software was meeting the needs of teachers; as well as what changes needed to occur in educational software to make it more effective. Five overarching themes emerged: (a) instructional design issues, (b) curriculum, (c) materials, (d) cost, and (e) meeting specific…