This paper presents a novel instructional model for e-learning and an evaluation study to determine the effectiveness of this model for teaching Java language programming to information technology specialists working for the Spanish Public Administration. This is a general-purpose model that combines objectivist and constructivist learning…

The impacts that the lack of physical cues and non-verbal cues of emotional expression has on the student learning experience in text based online environments were targeted separately in this study. A questionnaire was constructed with separate items for non-verbal cues of emotional expression and cues to physical identity. The survey also…

The purpose of this study was to consider the efficacy and popularity of "Virtual Lectures" (text-based, structured electronic courseware with information presented in manageable "chunks", interaction and multimedia) and "e-Lectures" (on-screen synchrony of PowerPoint slides and recorded voice) as alternatives to traditional lectures. We…

Distance education courses must cope with the difficulties imposed by delivering a class at a distance. As most courses only emphasize the cognitive aspects of the class and neglect the course's effect on the students, this gives no help for reaching the affective domain teaching goals. Especially for younger students, in distance education, when…

Humans draw on their stereotypic beliefs to make assumptions about others. Even though prior research has shown that individuals respond socially to media, there is little evidence with regards to learners stereotyping and categorizing pedagogical agents. This study investigated whether learners stereotype a pedagogical agent as being…

This article described the experiences of an inservice professional development program for teachers with a focus on online synchronous discussions. Transcripts of six online synchronous discussions containing 3600 messages from an online teacher professional development course were analyzed. In addition, the researchers interviewed 10…

E-learning environments increasingly serve as important infrastructural features of universities that enable teachers to provide students with different representations of knowledge and to enhance interaction between teachers and students and amongst students themselves. This study was designed to identify factors that can explain teachers' use of…

This paper argues that the internet is built around key technology design features of openness, robustness and decentralisation. These design features have transformed into social features, which are embodied within the cultural values of the internet. By examining applications that have become popular on the net, the importance of these values is…

This paper argues that if new communications technologies and online spaces are to yield "new relationship[s] with learners" then research that is tuned to recognize, capture and explain the pedagogical processes at the center of such interactions is vital. This has implications for the design of pedagogical activities within Initial…

In recent years, e-learning system has become more and more popular and many adaptive learning environments have been proposed to offer learners customized courses in accordance with their aptitudes and learning results. For achieving the adaptive learning, a predefined concept map of a course is often used to provide adaptive learning guidance…

The trend of using e-learning as a learning and/or teaching tool is now rapidly expanding into education. Although e-learning environments are popular, there is minimal research on instructors' and learners' attitudes toward these kinds of learning environments. The purpose of this study is to explore instructors' and learners' attitudes toward…

Research suggests that students learn better when studying a picture coupled with narration rather than on-screen text in a computer-based multimedia learning environment. Moreover, combining narration with the visual presence of an animated pedagogical agent may also encourage students to process information deeper than narration or on-screen…

Most asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments can be characterized as "functional" environments because they focus on functional, task-specific support, often disregarding explicit support for the social (emotional) aspects of learning in groups which are acknowledged by many educational researchers to…

The rapid development of computer and Internet technologies has made e-Learning become an important learning method. There has been a considerable increase in the needs for multimedia instructional material in e-Learning recently as such content has been shown to attract a learner's attention and interests. The multimedia content alone, however,…

Due to the lengthy learning process associated with complicated clinical techniques, undergraduate radiotherapy students can struggle to access sufficient time or patients to gain the level of expertise they require. By developing a hybrid virtual environment with real controls, it was hoped that group learning of these techniques could take place…