Discusses designers' need to design educational software for subversive use, recognizing that users fit the use of technology-based environments into contextually tuned "situated" learning environments. In this sense, good design is volatile design, or design which changes with contextual use. These ideas are illustrated with reference to a range…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore both accessibility and usability and examine the inhibitors and methods to evaluate site accessibility. Design techniques which improve end-user access and site interactivity, demonstrated by practical examples, are also studied. Design/methodology/approach: Assesses various web sites for…

The following study investigates the relative importance of Web management practices in business curricular pedagogy from an undergraduate student perspective. Using conjoint methodology, the results suggest that students early in their program of studies tend to most value (more) tests in terms of course attributes, while students later in their…

Proposes a user-centered framework for intranet design based on an understanding of people, their typical problems, information behaviors, and situated contexts. Argues that by adopting such an approach, intranets can be designed which facilitate organizational information access and use. (Author/AEF)

One of the principal objectives of engineering education is to prepare graduates for the practice of engineering in industry. Industry involvement in the educational process can be very helpful in devising programs to meet this objective. Yet, engineering education has a number of other stakeholders including students, faculty, academic…

There is a growing number of web-based and web-assisted course development tools and products that can be used to create on-line learning environment. The utility of these products, however, varies greatly depending on their feasibility, prerequisite infrastructure, technical features, interface, and course development and management tools. WebCT…

Over the past decade, there have been many changes in the tools used to design, the ways information can be represented and the underpinning theories which drive educational experiences. This paper focuses on several examples of software design that have been pedagogically successful and have demonstrated what is possible in software design and…

Schools have much to learn from video games and the gaming community. By providing compelling activities for motivating otherwise indifferent learners, video games can potentially help teachers improve the design of learning environments. However, there are considerable rhetorical and practical barriers between the schooling and gaming communities…

This paper proposes an automated, third party World Wide Web (WWW)-based evaluation service (i.e., an online questionnaire) that focuses on usability issues of WWW-based courseware and can be used by any WWW course instructor/student. Requirements related to the usability of educational systems are summarized, including the learning environment,…

This article demonstrates how school administrators are discovering the use of multimedia as a vehicle for school public relations programs. It describes the effective use of electronic presentations as a method to persuade and influence a broad-based school constituency in gaining their commitment for support of a community-based school program.…

Argues that the tendency to focus on the technical aspects of distance learning contributes to the infrequency of distance learning methods usage in education and training. Discusses the technical and human dimensions of distance learning, resistance to change, user perspective, and inertia and entropy. Outlines 10 human dimension principles…

Experience with case teaching, both at the Copenhagen Business School and also on a more large scale world basis, shows that students often do not carry out the kind of high level analysis of a case, which the case teaching paradigm claim it can encourage. Also, as the worlds of digital, multimedia and web-based educational environments emerge,…

Three user interfaces to LIBIS, a library catalog accessible through the Internet, were evaluated for use by people who are motor impaired to identify how interface design influences the motor actions necessary to operate the system. Problems and recommendations related to simplicity, consistency, instinctiveness, interaction/feedback, and…

This paper presents the methods and results of a year-long evaluation study, conducted for the purpose of determining disability accessibility barriers and potential solutions for those barriers found in four World Wide Web-based learning environments. The primary questions used to frame the evaluation study were: (1) Are there any features of the…

Outlines the cognitive theories influencing the Science Library Catalog's (SLC) design; describes the catalog itself; explains research based on the SLC; and discusses research results, emphasizing findings that are most relevant to school library media specialists developing children's information skills. An annotated bibliography of 14 related…