Many teachers, especially more experienced teachers, have been unable to find effective ways to use technology in their classrooms. One possible explanation for this lack of success is that the use of technology in the classroom has been viewed in terms of simple skill acquisition instead of as a change process that affects the behavior of individuals on a very profound level. This study analyzed the concerns of PK-12 teachers (n=659) toward the use of instructional technology using the Stages of Concern Questionnaire. Results indicate that the highest two stages of concern for the respondents reflect intense, personal, lower level concerns along with a desire to learn from what other teachers know and are doing. The lowest stage of concern for the aggregate data indicates that the respondents have minimal to no concerns about the relationship of students to the use of technology.

Many tertiary institutions are encompassing a greater use of technology in their subjects than ever before. All academic teachers are earnestly encouraged to reconceptualise their subjects and incorporate multimedia of some sort whether on CD-ROM or Web-based. This paper focuses on a CD-ROM written by two academics for three subjects in the Bachelor of Education at an Australian university. Based on the principles on constructivist theory of learning, three examples of appropriate interactivity and their pedagogies are examined here to indicate the variety, relevance, pedagogical principles and interest that can be generated to enhance students’ academic learning using multimedia. It is suggested that the application of Constructivist principles may assist educational developers in designing pedagogical interactivities that are productive and effective

The growth of online learning is enlarging the market for instructional content that can be bought and sold or shared over the Internet. To promote global commerce, industry groups are developing standards for web- and computer-based courseware architecture and packaging. An important underlying instructional design concept in the e-learning economy is the idea of learning objects. A learning object, narrowly defined, refers to a small, stand-alone unit of instruction that can be tagged with descriptors and stored in repositories for reuse in various instructional contexts. Principles of learning object design are presented and accompanied by guidelines for assuring that instructional content is designed and tagged for modularity and reuse.

Educational content on the Internet is rapidly increasing. Academicians and businesses are placing more course material on-line to supplement classroom and business training situations. Significant increases in undergraduate enrollments in Information System courses and the rapid pace of new knowledge in the field lead researchers to call for innovative approaches to learning. Prior researchers have reported that Web-based training technology (which has its foundation in computer-based training) has not integrated sound pedagogical practices into the authoring process when developing new tutorials. This research reviews basic learning theories, instructional design theories, and factors affecting successful Web-based tutorials. A model synthesizing instructional design pedagogy and Web-design concepts is proposed.

This paper uses Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers, 1995) to explore web site adoption by Australian primary and secondary schools. A content analysis (Krippendorf, 1980) of features on thirty-nine randomly selected Western Australian schools found two main uses of the sites -- marketing the school and communicating with the school's community. The majority of schools -- especially private schools -- used their web site for promotion, providing brochure-type information to prospective parents and community members. Fewer schools used their sites for communication, providing up to date information on school activities targeted at parents, students and staff. The results suggest that social pressure and competition -- especially for public schools -- fuel web site adoption. Schools seem to use their sites in an unstructured process that fails to consider the web site's role in marketing the school and communicating with interested parties. This exploratory study provides theoretical benefits by establishing benchmarks of web site adoption (Misic & Johnson, 1999) as well as discussing web site adoption phases (Hanson, 2000) and their implication for the digital divide (NTIA, 2000, 2002). Practical benefits include a snapshot of web site features in Western Australian schools and a comparison of public versus private school sites

This paper presents the notion of a virtual faculty as a viable alternative to extending and maintaining learner opportunities for students in regional universities or at universities where specialisations in which they are interested may not be offered. Staff from a number of Australian Universities participated in a CUTSD project to explore the viability of establishing a virtual faculty using videoconferencing as the medium of delivery. The success of this project was the result of close collaboration at a number of levels within the participating institutions and a willingness to explore effective approaches to teaching and learning for a videoconference environment.

The ability of ArtsOnline, a web site designed by professionals at the Los Angeles Educational Partnership (LAEP), to support interdisciplinary inquiry for an arts-centered, humanities-based, program at the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), was evaluated from June to August in 1999. As research findings reported herein show, design barriers and challenges can lessen the benefits from application of IT for interdisciplinary inquiry. Some of the design barriers and challenges mentioned included inadequate web site design, insufficient editing and information presentation, along with low access to IT by teachers and students, lack of funding, low administrative support and lack of teacher training. Findings detailed in this paper are from transcripts developed from five focus groups (N=30) convened at UCLA to evaluate ArtsOnline. The UCLA Armand Hammer Museum and Grunwald Center for the Graphics Arts and LAEP funded the evaluation

This article compared online instruction and face-to-face instruction at University Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). Participants were undergraduate full-time students who were enrolled in the Human Resource Development Program. The learning materials used was ‘How to write research proposals and reports’; and this represented a subtopic in the ‘Research Methods’ course. The design of an online learning environment emphasized four types of interaction: learner-content interaction (topic notes), learner-self interaction (multiple exercises), learner-learner interaction and instructor-learner interaction (online discussion on case studies and group project). The ‘QuickPlace’ software was customized to incorporate the component of multiple choice exercises. This latter was written with html language and linked to the ‘QuickPlace’. The face-to-face group attended routine lectures and tutorials on the same topic. Test results indicate that the online discussion assisted students to learn case studies slightly better than the face-to-face instruction. This may due to the above learning interactions that resulted in a greater emphasis on self-oriented and group-oriented learning as compared to an instructor-oriented face-to face learning experience. However, feedback from the students indicate a need to further improve the design of the online course.

Drawing a parallel between the introduction of Internet technologies in schools and the introduction of a new vaulting pole to pole-vaulting, this paper explores key issues of successful integration of online learning in schools. It highlights the need for a paradigm shift in learning to build a learning culture in schools and a strategic plan in schools to enculturate their students to be lifelong learners.

PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) such as Palm Pilots and Pocket PCs have gone beyond the world of business and are now finding their way into the hands of K-12 teachers and students. This article begins by discussing how teachers can use PDAs to facilitate anytime, anywhere course management. The integration of PDA technology into the classroom provides teachers an opportunity to promote student centered learning. PDA integration strategies that promote technology integration and student-centered learning are offered. Ideas range from the use of PDAs as creative and reflective writing journals to the use of PDAs as databases that store data and promote analysis. The article concludes with a discussion of free and inexpensive PDA software programs available for teachers and students.

In an effort to compare the issues in learning, application, and instructional design factors between different instructional delivery formats in Internet, classroom, and satellite-based system, an HRD course of a university was studied. Data analysis was conducted to compare the learning and application difference and the reasons for high or low learning and application were identified and categorized. The effectiveness of several instructional design factors was identified. From the findings, issues in learning and application and instructional design strategies to enhance learning and application were discussed

This paper reports the findings of a study conducted on Clemson University’s electronic collaboration tool “Collaborative Learning Environment” (CLE) in order to determine student opinion of the proprietary collaboration tool, and specifically why students didn’t collaborate with each other but instead repeated the teacher-as-questioner and student-as-answerer paradigm. Data was collected through an electronic survey on these five questions to determine student opinion: 1) how many topics students read; 2) how many replies students posted; 3) how often students used the discussion feature to ask questions or address controversial topics; 4) how much students like the discussion feature; 5) how much fun online discussion was for students. For comparison, the respondents were divided into two comparison groups, those whose participation was mandatory, and those whose participation was optional. Analysis of the data suggests that contrary to much literature on electronic collaboration suggesting students enjoy online collaboration, our students didn’t enjoy online discussion regardless of whether the discussion was optional or mandatory. However, students didn’t view it as a waste of time either, reporting that they found the online discussion useful for asking questions, addressing technical questions or discussing topics that might be controversial. Based upon these mixed results, we recommend experimenting with online discussion to discover ways that it can be both a good teaching tool and an activity students find enjoyable. We conclude by outlining an experimental online collaboration pedagogy that breaks students into teams of 3-5 people, gives each team a separate question or problem to solve in a limited amount of time, requires the team to negotiate a single solution to the problem and finally to report on the solution. Anecdotal feedback on the pedagogy suggests students enjoy the time-constrained, electronic, problem solving activities.

This purpose of this article is to share the findings of a research project on the Institute’s ELITE programme which had been designed to provide students with foundation IT skills when preparing to meet the requirements of the IT competency levels mandated by the Government. The author presents data from a 12 month study conducted at the Hong Kong Institute of Education which investigated preservice teachers’ perceptions of the self-paced computer-based ELITE programme. Important findings include the reasons why students choose the level and types of use of the ELITE programme, the frequency and duration of use, the reasons for the number of self-evaluation tests attempted and the timing of these tests. Findings reveal that students were not ready for self-directed learning and could not effectively transfer the IT skills into other areas to further integrate IT across the curriculum although most of them had entered the Institute with some degree of IT competency