Game-based learning has been a popular development and recommended as an effective pedagogy in educating new generations of learners. Few studies, however, have demonstrated the efficacy of game-based learning on learners' academic performance with empirical data. The described learning outcomes of game-based pedagogy within the limited available…

Many have elaborated on the potential of virtual reality (VR) in learning. This article attempts at organizing the literature in this issue in order to better identify indicators that can account for future valid trends, and seeks to bring to attention how authors who wrote about the future of VR in education confused futures' terms and produced…

A methodology to develop an easy-to-use toolkit for the preliminary design of high performance schools in hot and humid climates was presented. The toolkit proposed in this research will allow decision makers without simulation knowledge easily to evaluate accurately energy efficient measures for K-5 schools, which would contribute to the…

In the United States, 21% of all energy is used in residential buildings (40% of which is for heating and cooling homes). Promising improvements in residential building energy efficiency are underway such as the Building America Program and the Passive House Concept. The ability of improving energy efficiency in buildings is enhanced by building…

Interactive learning environments (ILEs) are increasingly used to support and enhance instruction and learning experiences. ILEs maintain and display information, allowing learners to interact with this information. One important method of interacting with information is navigation. Often, learners are required to navigate through the information…

The ever-changing requirements of working life require individuals to develop their competencies throughout their life cycle. This lifelong learning paradigm requires a renewed vision concerning assessment in which, besides formal learning, informal and non-formal learning experiences are also recognized. To support this lifelong learning…

The goal of this article is to draw a roadmap for designing an "ideal" virtual world for higher education, pointing decision-makers in a general direction for implementing virtual worlds and noting various barriers along the way. When using a roadmap, one can take many different paths to reach a desired destination. Similarly, institutions can…

Researchers increasingly suggest that accessibility remains a prominent issue across the World Wide Web (www). This study raises awareness about issues of access in higher education. This qualitative research design utilized a listserv that invited university based webmasters to use freeware to evaluate the overall accessibility of their…

Drawing on the everyday experience of collaborative design, and using ordinary language, I examine the nature of design practices and rules, how they come about, and how we use them. I offer some arguments to suggest that our conventional ways of thinking about rules are wrong. I conclude by arguing that the practice of designing and doing…

Finding few resources on how to teach a yearbook class, high school teacher Christina M. Vettraino set out to create her own. She offers a detailed, classroom-tested approach to producing an award-winning yearbook. Students on the staff and in the yearbook class learn the purpose and the concept of a unifying theme, graphic design, writing, and…

Creating a physical education department web site is an excellent way to promote a positive image of the program, because students and parents are able to find important information and improve the lines of communication. A well-designed physical education web site can even encourage students to increase their physical activity levels. Improved…

The purpose of this paper is to present the rationale and principles that guided the design and development of PARENTS, a multimedia case-based environment. Following a development research approach, the tenets of constructivist learning, and the advantages of case-based instruction, we developed a multimedia program in which we utilized and…

Sensory overload and split attention result in reduced learning when instructors read slides with bullet points and complex graphs during a lecture. Conversely, slides containing relevant visual elements, when accompanied by instructor narration, use both the visual and verbal channels of a student's working memory, thus improving the chances of…

In this paper, data obtained from a university website accessibility and usability validation process are analyzed and used to demonstrate how the design process can affect the online experience for users with disabilities. Interviews, observations, and use data (e.g. where users clicked on a page or what path taken through a site) were collected.…

Blended learning, mixing online and face-to-face learning modes, has been increasingly adopted in training with the expectation that it will help solve transfer problems and will lend other educational benefits. While there is a set of knowledge about design for facilitating transfer, it has not been investigated in a blended environment context.…