Information technology (IT) has the potential to improve the clinical learning environment. The extent to which IT enhances or detracts from healthcare professionals' role performance can be expected to affect both student learning and patient outcomes. This study evaluated nursing students' satisfaction with a novel compartmental Picture…

The use of the Web to deliver open, distance, and flexible learning has opened up the potential for social interaction and adaptive learning, but the usability, expressivity, and interoperability of the available tools leave much to be desired. This article explores these issues as they relate to teachers and learning designers through the case of…

In this paper, we identify key challenges faced by computer-based assessment (CBA) in secondary education and we put forward a framework of design considerations: design with the students and teachers, select the most appropriate media platform and plan an evolution rather than a revolution of prior practices. We present the CBA application…

Objective: Since simulations are often accepted uncritically, with excessive emphasis being placed on technological sophistication at the expense of underlying psychological and educational theories, we evaluated the learning performance of simulation software, in order to gain insight into the proper use of simulations for application in medical…

This paper describes a novel method to create a quantitative model of an educational content domain of related practice item-types using learning curves. By using a pairwise test to search for the relationships between learning curves for these item-types, we show how the test results in a set of pairwise transfer relationships that can be…

This study provides insights with regard to the types of cognitive processes that are involved in the formation of mental models and the way those models change over the course of a semester in novice programmers doing a design task. Eight novice programmers participated in this study for three distinct software design sessions, using the same…

Visual-cognitive loads influence the effectiveness of word prediction technology. Adjusting parameters of word prediction programs can lessen visual-cognitive loads. This study evaluated the benefits of WordQ word prediction software for users' performance when the prediction window was moved to a personal digital assistant (PDA) device placed at…

The "Dinner with Darwin" event held at the National Association of Biology Teachers Conference over several successive years represented an innovative forum for exploring the ways that the work of Charles Darwin has had an impact in fields quite far removed from biology. Through a wide-ranging discussion by panel participants, drawn from a number…

Biometrics has been making its way into school districts for the past decade. Biometric tools draw information from a person's identifying physical components, providing a virtually fail-safe level of protection for K-12 schools. In addition to their security uses, biometric systems are currently used in schools for cafeteria purchases, library…

The motion of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter is studied in this work. The moons had their positions with respect to the centre of the planet measured during one week of observation by means of telescopic charge coupled device images. It is shown that their movement can be well described as a simple harmonic motion. The revolution period and…

Software pricing is not a straightforward issue, since each procurement involves a special business arrangement between a library and its chosen vendor. The author thinks that it is reasonable to scale the cost of a product to such factors as the size of the library, the complexity of the installation, the number of simultaneous users, or the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate various issues related to Chinese language localisation in Evergreen, an open source integrated library system (ILS). Design/methodology/approach: A Simplified Chinese version of Evergreen was implemented and tested and various issues such as encoding, indexing, searching, and sorting…

Almost everything is now available online. What is good about this is that in most circumstances, libraries are no longer limited to serving users within just physical spaces. This proves to be a wonderful benefit for users, but sometimes it does not always work out as expected. Those familiar with setting up electronic resources know the…

The use of corpus-based findings in order to inform L2 teaching materials have been emphasized by many researchers owing to the fact that the studies of authentic texts have revealed some inconsistencies between the use of grammatical structures in corpora, and those found in language textbooks that are based purely on hunch. Therefore, by…

This study included a qualitative analysis of the content of the teaching courseware that was developed by the Curriculum Development Center of the Ministry of Education in 2003. The objective of the study was to determine the efficacy of the courseware from the perspective of learning-teaching. The results indicated that most of the lessons…