This paper examines the emergence of schools "micro-computing" in the UK between 1977 and 1984--a period of significant educational, technological and political change. During this time, computing developed rapidly from a niche activity in a few select schools to the state subsidized purchasing of a "computer in every school"…

The activities described here allow students to explore the concept of diffusion with the use of common equipment such as computers, webcams and analysis software. The procedure includes taking a series of digital pictures of a container of water with a webcam as a dye slowly diffuses. At known time points, measurements of the pixel densities…

Most studies in faculty development focus on assessing participant satisfaction rather than documenting change. The purpose of this study was to explore the possible short-term outcomes of a faculty development initiative. The research question that guided our study was: How does a faculty development seminar influence change in participants'…

The teaching of 3D digital game design requires the development of students' meta-skills, from story creativity to 3D model construction, and even the visualization process in design thinking. The characteristics a good game designer should possess have been identified as including redesign things, creativity thinking and the ability to…

Purpose: This paper intends to explore the levels of availability and restrictions in relation to the use of ICTs (information and communication technologies) for educating children with disabilities in Thailand's and Ethiopia's capitals. Design/methodology/approach: In the course of an international research project, parents and teachers of…

Higher education and associated institutions are beginning to share teaching materials known as Open Educational Resources (OER) or open courseware across the globe. Their success depends largely on the willingness of academics at these institutions to add their teaching resources. In a survey of the literature on OER there are several articles…

An effective learning environment interface (LEI) is a means to enable students to focus on learning and to understand content, while establishing connections and relationships among course activities. Using this fundamental premise, we propose a flexible, user-centered, and seamless LEI which is intended to remediate the fragmented interface…

Purpose: Although multiple studies examine institutional transitions of learning management systems (LMS) or compare their merits, studies examining students' free choice of access on parallel LMSs for the same course are absent from the literature. In order to investigate usage in a free-choice situation, identical content was posted at the same…

The present article describes four free or inexpensive Internet-based activities that can be used to supplement statistics/research methods/general psychology classes. Each activity and subsequent homework assessment is described, as well as homework performance outcome and student opinion data for each activity. (Contains 1 table.)

Drawing upon the literature in computational modeling, multivariable reasoning, and causal attribution, this study aims at characterizing multivariable reasoning practices in computational modeling and revealing the nature of understanding about multivariable causality. We recruited two freshmen, two sophomores, two juniors, two seniors, four…

Assessment of educational outcomes through purchased tests is commonplace in the evaluation of individual student ability and of educational programs. Focusing on the assessment of writing performance in a longitudinal study of first-time, full-time students (n = 598), this research describes the design, use, and assessment of an open-source…

A learning module for molecular level analysis of protein structure and ligand/drug interaction through the visualization of X-ray diffraction is presented. Using DeepView as molecular model visualization software, students learn about the general concepts of protein structure. This Biochemistry classroom exercise is designed to be carried out by…

Three experiments examined note-taking strategies and their relation to recall. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed either to take organized lecture notes or to try and transcribe the lecture, and they either took their notes by hand or typed them into a computer. Those instructed to transcribe the lecture using a computer showed the…

In its first decade (2001-2010) the OER movement has been carried by numerous relevant and successful projects around the globe. These were sometimes large-scale but more often not, and they were primarily initiated by innovating educational institutions and explorative individual experts. What has remained, however, is the quest for a sustainable…

Students' non-posting behaviour in online discussions is often neglected in educational research. However, it can be a potential indicator of student learning. This study examined the relationships between motivation, peer feedback and students’ posting and non-posting behaviours in online discussions in a distance learning class. Fifty-seven…