Since the publication of the IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) specification in 2003, many initiatives have been undertaken to build authoring tools that are simple enough to be used by non-technical instructors and teachers. IMS LD's technical complexity is believed to be a major burden for the adoption of the specification. We have developed a new…

Present-day students are expected to be lifelong learners throughout their working life. Higher education must therefore prepare students to self-direct their learning beyond formal education, in real-life working settings. This can be achieved in so-called hybrid learning configurations in which working and learning are integrated. In such a…

Schools are increasingly integrating multidisciplinary education into their programmes. The Minister of Education, Culture and Science has introduced a new, integrated science subject in secondary education in the Netherlands, called Nature, Life and Technology (NLT). This research note describes the design of a generic model for a professional…

Societal changes demand educators to apply new pedagogical approaches. Many educational stakeholders feel that serious games could play a key role in fulfilling this demand, and they lick their chops when looking at the booming industry of leisure games. However, current toolkits for developing leisure games show severe shortcomings when applied…

A team of secondary school language teachers and a teacher trainer developed a new method for Dutch writing instruction. The principles underlying the method were derived from insights regarding activating instruction and self-directed student learning. The development entailed two phases. In the first phase, the exploration of actual problems in…

Experiences in the development of educational software in the Netherlands have included the use of individual and team approaches, the determination of software content and how it should be presented, and the organization of the entire development process, from experimental programs to prototype to final product. Because educational software is a…

Over the last five years, several online courses covering different subjects have been developed and delivered in different settings at Wageningen UR (Wageningen University and Research Centre, Wageningen, The Netherlands). The total course content developed and delivered with a learning environment is equivalent with about 700 hours of study, and…

Educational guidance services play a key role in implementing educational reform in the Netherlands. There are about 70 state-financed educational service centers that support individual schools by providing such aids as psychological assessments, theoretical and methodological advice, teacher training, guidance, development, and educational…

Based on the premise that the production strategy and the production approach have a strong impact on quality courseware development, a survey was conducted in 1987 to evaluate the development processes used for computer-assisted instruction curriculum materials. Questionnaires were sent to 64 institutions of higher education in England, the…

An examination of Dutch research on legal case solving revealed that few law students get systematic instruction or testing in the technique of legal problem solving. The research being conducted at the Department of Computer Science and Law at the University of Amsterdam focuses on identifying the different functions in legal reasoning tasks in…

These papers represent the efforts of individual researchers from five countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, The Netherlands and the United States. Each paper reports on educational change in a different country, based on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model developed at the Research and Development Center for Teacher Education at the University of…

Three psycho-educational principles are outlined (additive bilingual enrichment principle, interdependence principle, and sufficient communicative interactive principle) to illustrate research on the maintenance of Frisian among native speakers and the development of Frisian fluency among native Dutch speakers. (Author/CB)

Between the years of 1978 and 1987, the Dutch National Institute for Curriculum Development (SLO) developed a core curriculum of objectives and content for a new social and political education curriculum. These new programs were to take effect in the secondary modern schools and lower vocational schools for students age 14-16. The empowering…

This article addresses the problem of ascertaining the most suitable learning environment for learning diagnostic skills in health education--specifically diagnostic reasoning and the selection of therapy--through the design, development, and evaluation of a videodisc program. It describes the design, development, and formative evaluation of a…

This book contains 19 papers examining innovation in open and distance learning through development of online and World Wide Web-based learning. The following papers are included: "Innovation in Distributed Learning: Creating the Environment" (Fred Lockwood); "Innovation in Open and Distance Learning: Some Lessons from Experience…