This paper discusses a qualitative participatory action research study, which examined the nature of the cohort learning experience in an online master's program, from both faculty and student perspectives. After describing this online master's program in adult education designed from a social constructivist theoretical frame, this paper discusses…

This paper provides a reflective overview of the eight papers collected in this special issue of "Educational, Technology and Society" that is based on ICALT-2003. We provide a very brief description of the conference and then discuss the eight papers in the context of a focus on learning and a focus on systems. In the conclusion, we offer our…

This paper presents the multimedia product for teaching Natural Sciences to 10-12 years old children. In this product three pedagogical agents, Teacher and two pupils guide the learner through the virtual environment. The inclusion of a team of pedagogical agents permits us to create a micro-model of lesson activity and gives a reliable support of…

Current e-Learning is based on learning management systems that provide certain standard services--course authoring and delivery, tutoring, administration and collaboration facilities. Rapid development of mobile technologies opens a new area of m-Learning to enhance the current educational opportunities. Field trips are a relevant part of the…

This paper proposes a methodology to calculate both the difficulty of the basic problems and the difficulty of solving a problem. The method to calculate the difficulty of problem is according to the process of constructing a problem, including Concept Selection, Unknown Designation, and Proposition Construction. Some necessary measures observed…

Edutella is an RDF-based E-Learning P2P network that is aimed to accommodate heterogeneous learning resource metadata repositories in a P2P manner and further facilitate the exchange of metadata between these repositories based on RDF. Whereas Edutella provides RDF metadata repositories with a quite natural integration approach, XML metadata…

Learning Objects Metadata (LOM) aims at describing educational resources in order to allow better reusability and retrieval. In this article we show how additional inference rules allows us to derive additional metadata from existing ones. Additionally, using these rules as integrity constraints helps us to define the constraints on LOM elements,…

Web-based collaboration calls for professional skills and competences to the benefit of the quality of the collaboration and its output. Within this framework, educational virtual environments may provide a means for training upon these skills and in particular the collaborative ones. On the basis of the existing technological means such training…

This paper describes a multi-agent approach that aims at supporting learners involved in a collective activity. We consider pedagogical situations where students have to explicitly define the articulation of their collective work and then achieve the different tasks they have defined. Our objective is to support these students by taking some of…

Much recent research and funding have focused on building Internet-based repositories that contain collections of high-quality learning resources, often called "learning objects." Yet little is known about how non-specialist users, in particular teachers, find, access, and use digital learning resources. To address this gap, this article describes…

This study concerns the application of tools and methods of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in the traditional class. More concretely, the design of an instructional aid called "lesson sheets" is discussed, according to specific guidelines, which evolve from the corresponding educational theories. Accordingly, the application of the proposed tool…

In this paper, we suggest that case-based resources, which are used for assisting cognition during problem solving, can be structured around the work of narratives in social cultural psychology. Theories and other research methods have proposed structures within narratives and stories which may be useful to the design of case-based resources.…

Distance education has been offered to young students in Australia for about 100 years. Recently, information and communication technology has been introduced as a means to improve communication, but not all remote students have access to this new technology. This has made it difficult to arrange collaborative learning for distance-education…

Considers the implications that broadening the definition of learning would have for educators and educational technologists. This special issues addresses the task of redefining learning from a variety of perspectives. The authors draw on different frameworks of analysis, exploring what it means to be learning at levels ranging from the…

Discusses various ways in which context may be interpreted to enhance learning and performance; illustrates domains of learning using a hockey team as an example; and suggests implications for learning, performance, and instructional design. Highlights include an ecological systems model; and examples of individual development, team learning, and…