Improving Primo Usability and Teachability with Help from the Users

In the aftermath of a consortium migration to a shared cloud-based resource management and discovery system, a small college library implemented a web usability test to uncover the kinds of difficulties students had with the new interface. Lessons learned from this study led to targeted changes, which simplified aspects of searching, but also enhanced the librarians’ ability to teach more effectively. The authors discuss the testing methods, results, and teaching opportunities, both realized and potential, which arose from implementing changes

41P. Practical Lessons Learned while Developing Web 2.0 Collaboration Services for Communities of Practice

Although a plethora of Web 2.0 applications exist today, there is little literature reporting on experiences, concrete recommendations or best practices when developing such applications. The scarcity of such records makes it difficult for developers to determine how best to support the practices of communities with the use of Web 2.0 technologies. In this paper, we report on eight practical lessons learned while developing Web 2.0 collaboration services for Communities of Practice in the framework of a three years long European research project on Technology Enhanced Learning. The main objective of this project was to investigate how Web 2.0 technologies could impact the communication and collaboration needs of Communities of Practice interacting online and, conversely, how new interaction needs could impact Web 2.0 technology. The above lessons are presented in a way that could aid people engaged in various phases of the development of Web-based collaboration support services

Technology enhanced learning in 21st century mass higher education. Aspects of design, practice and strategy for a necessary step change

Modern day mass higher education presents challenges for both learners and teachers. Whilst digital resources, Web 2.0 technologies and online connectivity can add significantly to the learning opportunities of 21st century students, many cross programme Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) provisions remain collections of somewhat disconnected and basic materials. In its early development, organised e-learning has generally been the province of specialist programmes and individuals championing the new technologies. However along with the adoption of technology enhanced learning, there is a growing need to develop, design and embed more fundamental and far reaching strategic approaches that embrace the core of traditional university learning and teaching programmes. This paper focuses upon a large undergraduate core module and discusses the implications of a practice based case study which explored how traditional campus based undergraduate learning and teaching could be redesigned and enhanced by the addition of online technology and e-pedagogy. It considers aspects of both pedagogical and technological design and examines how a VLE can support learners and teaching teams. Findings showed that students were extremely positive about the mix of onsite and online learning. They saw anytime, anywhere access as fundamental, and valued the flexible access and collaborative opportunities offered by Web 2.0 and mobile resources. Considerable operational benefits arose in supporting teaching teams and student marks increased. Drawing upon lessons learned from practice, and feedback gained from students and teachers, the paper examines how the approach may inform future curriculum delivery and programme specification. It considers the contribution that blended learning may make in addressing the needs of 21st century learners in mass higher education, and reflects on the implications of the case study in terms of aspects of design, practice and strategy

The development of computer assisted instruction on the world wide web to enhance English learning for Thai non-formal education students

The purpose of this project was to develop computer-assisted instruction (CAI) software on the world wide web (WWW). This project was an interactive English learning environment for Thai adult students at the Warin Chumrab District Non-Formal Education Center, Thailand. This project software followed the recommendation of a recent study by the center of education technology (CET) indicating that the favorite types of CAI among Thai adult students were tutorial and drill and practice. In this project students chose to learn from two types of lessons, either a tutorial or a drill and practice. The lessons were made interesting by the use of music, animation, and Java applets. Internet tools, such as discussion boards, email, and related educational hyperlinks were easily accessible from within this project. The review group consisted of 20 Thai adult students. The review group responded to a web survey after they had used this project software. The surveyed students stated that the drill and practice exercises, the tutorial and the internet tools enhanced their learning of English

Enabling an Agile Information Supply Chain in Service Oriented Architectures with Web Services

The Information Systems (IS) leadership in enterprises share common pervasive agility issues associated with corporate data management, such as providing access when and where needed, data validation and integrity issues, analyzing data housed in disparate systems, and reporting consolidated data to applicable parties. To address these problems some organizations are employing Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) as a paradigm, which is enhanced by the use of web services, to provide a lightweight means of leveraging resources. The Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council (FFIEC) is one such organization and we use the traditional systems analysis and design (SAD) approach to frame how the FFIEC employed SOA as a new paradigm of conducting business with web services. We provide lessons learned that are concerned with initiating SOA with web services in order to achieve an agile information supply chain

Manual on Creating Web-enhanced Lessons Using Thinkfinity

This is a compilation of guidelines that may be used as a manual for creating web-enhanced lessons. Related Files will contain detailed documentation for the following areas: Contents of the following may be found in the Related Files section of this document Arts Edge EconEdLInk Edsitement Xpeditions Illuminations Read-Write-Think Science Netlink

Evaluation of World Wide Web-based Lessons for a First Year Dental Biochemistry Course

First year dental students at The University of Texas Dental Branch at Houston (Dental Branch) are required to take a basic biochemistry course. To facilitate learning and allow student self-assessment of their progress, WWW-based lessons covering intermediary metabolism were developed as a supplement to traditional lectures. Lesson design combined text, graphics, and animations and included learner control, links to other learning resources, and practice exercises and exams with immediate feedback. Results from an on-line questionnaire completed by students in two different classes showed that they completed 50% of the lessons and spent an average of 4 hrs. on-line. A majority of the students either agreed or strongly agreed that practice exercises were helpful, that the ability to control the pace of the lessons was important, that the lesson structure and presentation was easy to follow, that the illustrations, animations, and hyperlinks were helpful, and that the lessons were effective as a review. The very positive response to the WWW-based lessons indicates the usefulness of this approach as a study aid for dental students

Who makes better use of technology for learning in D&T? Schools or university?

University teacher training departments have many functions in their role as Schools for Initial Teacher Education (ITE), these include accrediting qualified teacher status, teaching subject knowledge and pedagogy, and influencing change in a school subject's content and pedagogy. This paper discusses this latter area. It can be easy for teacher training in universities to become ivory towers, modelling new ideas for curriculum delivery and content in a 'bubble' away from the real world of the school classroom. A centre of design and technology (D&T) education at an English university has undertaken research-led developments in the use of web 2.0 technologies and technology enhanced learning (TEL), modelling how they can be used in the classroom. The research examined in this paper is the next stage of the centre's curriculum development to ensure the relevance of the university curriculum content and practices. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the use of TEL in secondary schools is inconsistent and sporadic with D&T teachers using TEL, with minimal awareness of research available, which could inform their practice. This impacts on the centre's trainee teachers as they begin teaching in schools during their final year of the course, with a possible unrealistic expectation of how TEL is used in schools, based on their university experiences

Using Hybrid Effectively in Christian Higher Education

Hybrid is just one of a number of terms used for the convergence of face-to-face and online learning, At the University of Central Florida (UCF) they are called mixed mode courses, In the corporate world the most common language used for hybrid is blended learning, Blended learning, says Bob Mosher, is about using multiple learning modalities, which include, but are not limited to, the Web.7 The blended learning term is also being used more frequently within academic circles,8 Because of the inconsistency in how blended learning is employed, though, and because our goal is not to describe learning in general but to focus on individual courses, this article will use the term hybrid and will apply it more narrowly to mean a course in which face-to-face and online learning are integrated in such a way that the seat time of the course is reduced

AAAI 2008 Workshop Reports

AAAI was pleased to present the AAAI-08 Workshop Program, held Sunday and Monday, July 13-14, in Chicago, Illinois, USA. The program included the following 15 workshops: Advancements in POMDP Solvers; AI Education Workshop Colloquium; Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems, Enhanced Messaging; Human Implications of Human-Robot Interaction; Intelligent Techniques for Web Personalization and Recommender Systems; Metareasoning: Thinking about Thinking; Multidisciplinary Workshop on Advances in Preference Handling; Search in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics; Spatial and Temporal Reasoning; Trading Agent Design and Analysis; Transfer Learning for Complex Tasks; What Went Wrong and Why: Lessons from AI Research and Applications; and Wikipedia and Artificial Intelligence: An Evolving Synergy