Technology Integration in a Science and Mathematics Methods Course: Addressing Virginia\u27s Computer/Technology Standards of Learning

The Standards of Learning for Virginia Public Schools [1] require a high level of knowledge in the use of computers and technology on the part of both students and educators. The Education Department at Mary Washington College has decided to prepare its students to meet this challenge by adopting a strategy of program wide integration of technology, bringing appropriate uses of technology into each education course. This strategy calls for the use of technology by both students and instructors. The course Instructional Skills in the Elementary Classroom, a science and mathematics planning course, served as a proving ground for this approach. The integration of technology in this course includes the use of presentation software, spreadsheets, mathematics and science content software, the evaluation of World Wide Web-based resource materials, and a course web page. Halfway through the third semester of this integration experiment, We believe the integration approach to be a proven success. The students enrolled in the course have become enthusiastic users of technology, carrying the skills into other courses and student teaching, and they view the acquisition of these skills as an integral and important aspect of their preparation for teaching careers

Web Accessibility of Indian University Library Website: An Evaluation with WAVE Website Evaluation Tool

The advent of new teaching-learning methods has brought a great demand for accessible educational websites. There is much research on the accessibility of the website on educational websites in recent years from different countries. A website serves as a communication channel for publishing information and services in higher education. It is expected that higher education institutions must provide access to their information resources and services to all its user in an equal manner irrespective of their physical disability. Hence, it should be mandatory for higher education institutions to include web accessibility as an important part of their websites. Libraries are the heart and an integral part of the higher education system. A library website is the main door from where learners are benefited by the information resources and services of an institute. This paper takes the issue of web accessibility of the home page of the library website for the top fifty universities ranked by NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework).NIRF is approved by MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Department) and it ranks institution across the country in India. The home page of the top fifty Universities Library websites has been analyzed for accessibility errors and related issues with the help of WAVE (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool). Results revealed that maximum universities had accessibility issues on their library home page

Enrich awareness of users to detect phishing websites

Phishing attack is used for identity theft with the help of social engineering and some sophisticated attacks. To attract the user by clicking a URL and is trapped to a phishing Web page. Security for user’s credentials is one of most important factor for organizations nowadays. It can be achieved through several ways like education and training. Through training and education the level of awareness will be increased also it helps to mitigate phishing. Approach with several steps is introduced in this paper, where a user must take a look or take these precautionary measures if the user is browsing any Web browser. We found it possible to detect Phishing Web pages without anti Phishing solutions. This approach contains several steps to examine whether the Web page is a real Web page or a fake Webpage. All these steps will check the phishing features exist in that Web page or not. For evaluation of our approach we analyzed the data set of Phish Tank, this data set is full of Phishing Web Pages. The purpose of evaluation is to check the features discussed in our approach to aware the user. From the following result it is resulted that the user can detect without using any Anti Phishing solution just by taking some steps to check the Web page for certain features

Searching dynamic Web pages with semi-structured contents

At present, information systems (IS) in higher education are usually supported by databases (DB) and accessed through a Web interface. So happens with SiFEUP, the IS of the Engineering Faculty of the University of Porto (FEUP). The typical SiFEUP user sees the system as a collection of Web pages and is not aware of the fact that most of them do not exist in the sense of being an actual HTML file stored in a server but corresponds to HTML code generated on the fly by a designated program that accesses the DB and brings the most up-to-date information to the user desktop. Typical search engines do not index dynamically generated Web pages or just do that for those that are specifically mentioned in a static page and do not follow on the links the dynamic page may contain. In this paper we describe the development of a search facility for SiFEUP, how the limitations put to indexing dynamic Web pages were circumvented, and an evaluation of the results obtained. The solution involves using a locally developed crawler, the Oracle Text full text indexer, plus meta-information automatically drawn from the DB or manually added to improve the relevance factor calculation.At present, information systems (IS) in higher education are usually supported by databases (DB) and accessed through a Web interface. So happens with SiFEUP, the IS of the Engineering Faculty of the University of Porto (FEUP). The typical SiFEUP user sees the system as a collection of Web pages and is not aware of the fact that most of them do not exist in the sense of being an actual HTML file stored in a server but corresponds to HTML code generated on the fly by a designated program that accesses the DB and brings the most up-to-date information to the user desktop. Typical search engines do not index dynamically generated Web pages or just do that for those that are specifically mentioned in a static page and do not follow on the links the dynamic page may contain. In this paper we describe the development of a search facility for SiFEUP, how the limitations put to indexing dynamic Web pages were circumvented, and an evaluation of the results obtained. The solution involves using a locally developed crawler, the Oracle Text full text indexer, plus meta-information automatically drawn from the DB or manually added to improve the relevance factor calculation

Evaluating web accessibility and usability for totally blind users at Thailand Cyber University

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston UniversityResearch suggests that web-based education increases opportunities for underserved populations to be integrated into educational activities (Schmetzke, 2001; Burgstahler, 2002; Opitz, Savenye, & Rowland, 2003). This may be true for students with disabilities because they have more flexibility to participate in formal education. However, Moisey (2004) found that people with disabilities had lower rates of enrollment and educational achievement than people without disabilities. These findings raise the question of whether or not web-based = education helps increase students with disabilities' access to learning opportunities and improve their learning outcome. This study investigated the degree of difficulty blind persons had in accessing and using web-based educational resources provided by Thailand Cyber University (TCU). Based on a mixed methods design, the data were collected in two phases. Quantitative data were collected first, in order to identify accessibility problems and conformance levels reported by automated web accessibility evaluation tools. Qualitative data was collected from interviews with blind participants in the second phase to expand the understanding of the accessibility problems and usability issues that were not discovered in the quantitative phase by the automated web accessibility evaluation tools. The findings indicate that all of the 13 selected web pages failed to meet a minimum requirement of WCAG 2.0. This means those selected web pages would be inaccessible for the blind. However, the findings indicate blind participants rated only one of the 13 pages as inaccessible. Moreover, their ratings of difficulty on "usability" were higher than their ratings of difficulty on "accessibility" on the same web page. On six out of 22 tasks, blind and sighted user groups agreed on the ratings. Nevertheless, the time that it took to complete each task varied greatly between the two user groups.2031-01-0

Redesign of web-based exam for knowledge evaluation in Advanced Mathematics for pharmaceutical students based on analysis of the results

The usage of the information technologies everywhere leads to demands for new manners of education. Modern e-learning environments lead the teaching, the learning and the evaluation of acquired knowledge and skills of the students to a new era. The students' motivation for e-learning is considered. The course of Advanced Mathematics is part of the curriculum of pharmaceutical students at the Medical University - Plovdiv. For students' knowledge evaluation it is used a hybrid-type exam in this university discipline, i.e. a problems-solving part and a remote web-based test which is created using the free and open-source e-educational platform Moodle. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the implemented electronic test for knowledge evaluation of the students, using statistical methods and instruments. The questions included in the test and the respective answers given by the students are estimated and analysed. Thus, it is made an improvement of the database of the test questions. The received results are used to enhance the quality of the developed knowledge evaluation and the type of its implementation.Comment: 8 page

Indian Supercourse Network in Epidemiology - Development and Evaluation

There are many advantages to using locally produced health information, such as its cultural appropriateness, geographic specificity, and flexibility. The Indian Supercourse is an online repository of lectures in Epidemiology, written by authors in India, on topics of particular interest to teachers and students in India.The purpose of this dissertation is to describe the planning, development and evaluation of the Indian Supercourse Network. The Indian Supercourse Network has 6,000 faculty members in India, and more than 200 epidemiology lectures written by authors in India. Evaluation of the Indian Supercourse Network included an assessment of utilization of these educational materials in India using page views measured by web statistics analysis software. The main hypothesis compared page views from India, between the Indian Supercourse and the Main Supercourse. The results of the Wilcoxon Rank-Sum test showed that there were significantly more page views from India to the Indian Supercourse as compared to the Main Supercourse (p < 0.0001). This means that users in India prefer to use the Indian Supercourse more than the Main Supercourse. This may be because information in the Indian Supercourse is more pertinent to the epidemiology education needs of users in India. In contrast, there were significantly more page views from non-Indian countries to the Main Supercourse as compared to the Indian Supercourse (p < 0.0001). Interestingly, there was no significant difference (p = 0.0642) in total page views from all countries considered together, between the Indian Supercourse and the Main Supercourse.Public Health Significance - In India, there is a lack of an adequate system for formal epidemiology education. The Indian Supercourse has made epidemiology education available to everyone interested in learning epidemiology in India. The results of this study have shown that the Indian Supercourse is being utilized by people in India. Information contained on the Indian Supercourse website can eventually be disseminated across the digital divide via low-bandwidth methods and the postal system in India

Dungeons and Dragons in Education: A Usability Study

This 58-page paper was written to complete the Learning Design and Technology Master's program. The results from the usability study were presented at the 2020 Technology, Colleges, and Community Worldwide Online Conference in the form of a PowerPoint Presentation. A PDF of the website is also included in the resources.When it comes to this generation of learners, challenges that often arise for educators are getting learners engaged, getting learners to process information, and getting learners to apply that information. Game-based learning has been seen as an effective tool for engaging students in these areas. A web-based resource website was developed for Dungeons and Dragons (D&D)in education for educators that are seeking a way to facilitate learning engagement and assess learning transfer. This paper focuses on the design and evaluation of a website about D&D in education. Feedback collected from six participants indicated that they felt the website was easy to navigate and felt satisfied with the site’s content and design