The development of a model for organising educational resources on an Intranet

The twenty-first century has found education at the crossroads of change. There are burgeoning challenges facing the modern educator. To rise to the importuning, educators find themselves turning to Information Technology for the answers. The technologies utilised in attempts to overcome the challenges often include the Internet and electronic educational resources. Although the Internet is not unduly called the Information Highway, it is also fraught with misleading and incorrect information. Educators’ arduous searches result in few good and useable resources. Thus, to store, organise and efficiently retrieve the discovered resources is a matter of time-saving. The aim of the study was to develop a method to organise and retrieve educational resources in an efficient and personalised manner. In order to do this, an exploration into pedagogy and educational paradigms was undertaken. The current educational paradigm, constructivism, proposes that each learner is an individual with unique learning and personal needs. To develop a new model, the current models need to be understood. The current solutions for the organising of educational resources are realised as several software packages, also called e-learning packages. A list of criteria that describes the essential requirements for organising educational resources was established. These criteria were based upon the pedagogical principles prescribed by educators and the practical technological frameworks necessary to fulfil the needs of the teaching/learning situation. These criteria were utilised to critique and explore the available solutions. It was found that although the available e-learning packages fulfil a need within their genre, it does not meet with the core requirements of constructivism. The resource base model seeks to address these needs by focussing on the educational aspects of resource delivery over an Intranet. For the purposes of storing, organising and delivering the resources, a database had to be established. This database had to have numerous qualities, including the ability to search and retrieve resources with great efficiency. Retrieving data in an efficient manner is the forte of the star schema, while the storing and organising of data is the strength of a normalised schema. It is not standard practice to utilise both types of schemas within the same database. A star schema is usually reserved for data warehouses because of its data retrieval abilities. It is customary to utilise a normalised schema for operational databases. The resource base model, however, needs both the storage facilities of an operational database and the efficient query facilities of a data warehouse. The resource base model, therefore, melds both schemas into one database with interlinking tables. This database forms the foundation (or the back-end) of the resource base. The resource base model utilises web browsers as its user interface (or front-end). The results of the study on the pedagogy, the current e-learning solutions and the resource base were written up within this dissertation. The contribution that this dissertation makes is the development of a technique to efficiently store, organise and retrieve educational resources in such a manner that both the requirements of constructivism and outcomes-based education are fulfilled. To this end, a list of technological and pedagogical criteria on which to critique a resource delivery technique has been developed. This dissertation also elaborates on the schema designs chosen for the resource base, namely the normalised schema and the star schema. From this schema, a prototype has been developed. The prototype’s function was two-fold. The first function is to determine the feasibility of the technique. Secondly, to determine the success of the technique in fulfilling the needs expressed in the list of criteri

Forty years of computers and education : A roller-coaster relationship

For forty years the relationship between computers and education has been engaged in a headlong journey, full of ups and downs, wild swerves to right and left, somehow both exhilarating and frightening, sometimes in tandem but at others barely still holding hands. The engine of the technologies keeps changing while the driver is sometimes a discipline, learners, or the teacher. The landscape passed along the way includes fleeting glimpses of beautiful but unconquerable mountains followed by attractive rivers with treacherous currents. The population is sometimes persuaded by innovators to come along for the ride, and then suddenly they embark on their own journey into an entirely different valley. The paper analyses this journey along the TC3 twin track of education with and about information and communication technologies, using evidence from its publications and debates, organisational structure and the influence of individuals. The presentation, from one who is neither a computer scientist nor mathematician, will aim to portray a particular perspective on this roller-coaster relationship.2nd IFIP Conference on the History of Computing and EducationRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Centre of Excellence in Information Society Technologies the Role of the University in Capacity Building Outside the University

Structural changes in the Bulgarian society and the process of alignment to the European Union require development of flexible administrative structures that are able to adopt and renew permanently their management and personnel capacities according to the new realities. A range of important features of the socio-economic life as a whole should be considered: • massive information saturation, performed by plenty of electronic mediators and technologies; • new qualitative requirements to the human resources, their skills, working style and motivation; • need of permanent self-development and renewing – permanent training and retraining of the personnel. In accordance with Strategy for Building Modern Administrative System of the Republic of Bulgaria, the State and local administration should serve the citizens of the country and the national business more efficiently. The services provided by various public administration units should be more easily accessible, more comfortable, user-friendly and low-cost for the tax-payers. The realisation of the National Strategy for Transition to Information Society shall lead to harmonisation of the relationship between administration, population and business and to augmentation of the democratic control of the society on the management of the country. The Government envisages development of a national public administration information system as part of the national information infrastructure. The Council of Ministers is to prepare a Uniform Act for the Principles and Universal Standards for Operation in All Public Administration Units

La telematica nella formazione a distanza: due approcci a confronto

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Teaching HRD personnel : experiences of computer-mediated communication in differently structured environments

This paper will provide an overview of the CMC structure in two different units of study in the Masters of Professional Education and Training at Deakin University. Each of these structures makes a set of demands on participants, and provides differing collaborative learning opportunities. The paper examines the experiences we have had in each of these structures, focusing on student participation, style of contribution to CMC, and the relationship between socialisation processes and knowledge construction.<br /

The impact of information and communications technology on teaching and design of flexible, online and distance education courses at Deakin University

This paper describes the use of an online learning environment which has been established for postgraduate students studying at Master&rsquo;s level in Professional Education and Training Deakin University. A detailed evaluation of the use of computer conferences in an Open and Distance Education specialism was undertaken during 2000 as part of a CUTSD funded project, Learner Centred Evaluation of Computer Facilitated Learning Projects in Higher Education. As the Open and Distance Education specialism is being revised and new units are written, the information gathered in this evaluation is being integrated into the pedagogical planning and the technological decisions being made about the design of the new master&rsquo;s program.</div

Creating a Natural Environment for Synergy of Disciplines

The paper presents the authors’ experience in stimulating the synergy of disciplines via active learning methods; the emphasis being on project based learning. Promoting this method is demonstrated in the context of teachers’ training courses and developing a set of IT textbooks. Numerous examples are presented showing that the synergy of various disciplines is quite natural when integrating the study of IT with math & art & fashion design; math & language; history & crafts & math; electrical engineering & math. The project samples developed by teachers are inspired by ideas in textbooks and are accomplished by means of specially designed computer applications. The importance of working on projects tuned to the learner’s interest as a decisive motivation factor is emphasized. In addition authors show that the bouquet of projects becomes more colorful with every new issue of the courses thanks to the learners’ creativity and the collaborative knowledge building

The Extended UTAUT Acceptance Model of Computer-Based Distance Training System Among Public Sector's Employees in Jordan

The utilization of advanced network technologies and modern computer applications in distance learning raises the importance of distance learning system in the delivery of learning materials and resources to remote trainees. This innovation offers the organizations and their employees an opportunity to solve the problems associated with traditional training methods. In this respect, the acceptance of computer based distance training system (CBDTS) is considered critical in determining the success of its implementation. However, the number of studies that have been conducted to examine the acceptance of distance training system by employees of public sector organizations in the Kingdom of Jordan is very limited. It is also questionable whether the information system acceptance models that have been previously developed can be used to examine the acceptance of CBDTS by public sector employees in Jordan. Questions are also raised to the idea that perhaps there may be other factors that play important roles in this context. The main objectives of this study therefore are to determine the factors that lead to the acceptance of public sector employees on computer-based distance training system and finally to propose a model of technology acceptance of computer-based distance training system by public sector employees. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed through a survey to public sector employees in Jordan. The study received about 386 responses, which represents 64.3% returned rate. Structural equation model (SEM) was used with AMOS version 16.0 to analyze the data. The findings indicate that six core determinants, namely, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, system flexibility, system enjoyment, social influence, and facilitating conditions significantly influenced employee intention to use distance training system. Five core determinants; system interactivity, system enjoyment, computer anxiety, computer self efficacy, and facilitating conditions significantly determine effort expectancy while only four of them including system interactivity, system enjoyment, computer anxiety, and effort expectancy significantly determine performance expectancy. Consequently, based on these findings, the final research model known as computer-based distance training acceptance model (CBDTAM) is proposed to explain and predict public sector employee’s intention in using computer-based distance training system. A comprehensive understanding of this model will assist decision makers to identify the reasons for the acceptance or resistance of computer based distance training system among public sector employees in the future and finally to support them to enhance the system’s acceptance and usage

Words Are Silver, Mouse Clicks Are Gold?

How do we teach children to express and communicate ideas in a formal and informal mode? What type of language do they need in a concrete context? How should they determine a proper level of formalization of their descriptions? In an attempt to explore these issues we carried out an experiment with 5th graders from three Bulgarian schools during which the students experienced the whole process of generating a good description – becoming aware of the ambiguity, producing counterexamples, reducing the ambiguity, eliminating the redundancy. The educational scenarios and the Cubix Editor (an Elica-Logo application) used in the experimental activities were developed in the frames of the DALEST European project. The first impressions confirm our belief that the language is playing significant role in the learning experiences of the students, that the relationship between thoughts and words involves back and forth reshaping process. While constructing and describing cubical structures they articulated their own ideas, developed concepts collaboratively with others, moved between everyday and mathematical terms, between procedural and declarative style, exploring the boundaries of understanding. Such interplay with the step-wise refinement of their descriptions of cubical structures would hopefully enhance students’ skills for working with mathematical definitions, on one hand, and prepare them for writing, debugging and explaining programs, on the other