Course Management Systems

Student perceptions of service quality in higher education, particularly of the elements not directly involved with content and delivery of course units, are researched using a performance-only adaptation of the SERVQUAL research instrument. A principal components factor analysis performed on data collected from a sample of 333 undergraduate business and management students suggests that students' perceived service quality has three dimensions:``requisite elements'', which are essential to enable students to fulfil their study obligations;`a cceptable elements'', which are desirable but not essential to students; and``functional elements'', which are of a practical or utilitarian nature. A comparison of perceptions of service quality between first and final year students suggests that perceptions of service quality elements change over a period of study, with``acceptable elements'' having increasing importance. Implications for course management teams are discussed, and suggestions for further research are made.

Background-Infection of pancreatic necrosis has a major impact on clinical course, management, and outcome in acute pancreatitis. Currently, guided fine needle aspiration is the only means for an early and accurate diagnosis of infected necrosis. Procalcitonin (PCT), a 116 amino acid propeptide of calcitonin, and interleukin 8 (IL-8), a strong neutrophil activating cytokine, are markers of severe inflammation and sepsis. Aims-To analyse the clinical value of PCT and IL-8 as biochemical parameters for predicting infected necrosis in acute pancreatitis. Patients and methods-Fifty patients with acute pancreatitis entered this prospective study and were stratified into three groups according to morphological and bacteriological findings: 18 patients with oedematous pancreatitis (group I), 14 patients with sterile necrosis (group II), and 18 patients who developed infected necrosis a median of 13.5 days after the onset of symptoms (group III). After admission serum samples were drawn daily for two weeks. Concentrations of PCT and IL-8 were measured by chemoluminescent immunoassays (upper reference range 0.5 ng/ml for PCT and 70 pg/ml for IL-8).

The adoption of Course Management Systems (CMSs) for web-based instruction continues to increase in today's higher education. A CMS is a software program or integrated platform that contains a series of web-based tools to support a number of activities and course management procedures . Examples of Course Management Systems are Blackboard, WebCT, eCollege, Moodle, Desire2Learn, Angel, etc. An argument for the adoption of elearning environments using CMSs is the flexibility of such environments when reaching out to potential learners in remote areas where brick and mortar institutions are non-existent. It is also believed that e-learning environments can have potential added learning benefits and can improve students' and educators' self-regulation skills, in particular their metacognitive skills. In spite of this potential to improve learning by means of using a CMS for the delivery of e-learning, the features and functionalities that have been built into these systems are often underutilized. As a consequence, the created learning environments in CMSs do not adequately scaffold learners to improve their selfregulation skills. In order to support the improvement of both the learners' subject matter knowledge and learning strategy application, the e-learning environments within CMSs should be designed to address learners' diversity in terms of learning styles, prior knowledge, culture, and self-regulation skills. Self-regulative learners are learners who can demonstrate 'personal initiative, perseverance and adaptive skill in pursuing learning' . Self-regulation requires adequate monitoring strategies and metacognitive skills. The created e-learning environments should encourage the application of learners' metacognitive skills by prompting learners to plan, attend to relevant content, and monitor and evaluate their learning. This position paper sets out to inform policy makers, educators, researchers, and others of the importance of a metacognitive e-learning approach when designing instruction using Course Management Systems. Such a metacognitive approach will improve the utilization of CMSs to support learners on their path to self-regulation. We argue that a powerful CMS incorporates features and functionalities that can provide extensive scaffolding to learners and support them in becoming self-regulated learners. Finally, we believe that extensive training and support is essential if educators are expected to develop and implement CMSs as powerful learning tools.

This study relates the performance of college students in introductory science courses to the amount of content covered in their high school science courses. The sample includes 8310 students in introductory biology, chemistry, or physics courses in 55 randomly chosen U.S. colleges and universities. Students who reported covering at least 1 major topic in depth, for a month or longer, in high school were found to earn higher grades in college science than did students who reported no coverage in depth. Students reporting breadth in their high school course, covering all major topics, did not appear to have any advantage in chemistry or physics and a significant disadvantage in biology. Care was taken to account for significant covariates: socioeconomic variables, English and mathematics proficiency, and rigor of their preparatory high science course. Alternative operationalizations of depth and breadth variables result in very similar findings. We conclude that teachers should use their judgment to reduce coverage in high school science courses and aim for mastery by extending at least 1 topic in depth over an extended period of time.

The aims of this study were to find the prevalence of tethered cord in patients with anorectal malformations; to determine if the presence of tethered cord relates to the severity of the anorectal defect, and to certain symptoms, signs, radiologic findings, and associated anomalies; and finally to determine whether tethered cord impacted on a patient's functional prognosis and whether surgical untethering improved the patient. The authors studied 934 patients with anorectal malformations, 111 of whom had magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the spine. We compared patients with and without tethered cord by using parametric and nonparametric statistical tests. Tethered cord occurred in 24% of the patients. The prevalence varied according to the type of anorectal defect from 43% in the complex group to 11% in patients with rectovestibular fistula. Patients with tethered cord had a lateral sacral ratio lower than that of patients without tethered cord (0.410 versus 0.702). Tethered cord was present in 90% of patients with myelodysplasia, 60% of patients with a presacral mass, 57% of patients with sacral hemivertebrae, and 56% of patients with a single kidney. The greater number of associated anomalies a patient had, the greater the risk of having tethered cord (P < .05 for all differences). The authors noted differences between patients with and without tethered cord in the presence of voluntary bowel movements (46% versus 70%), fecal soiling (91% versus 63%), constipation (21% versus 43%), and urinary incontinence (86% versus 42%). The data indicate that patients with tethered cord have a worse functional prognosis than patients without tethered cord. However, the incontinence in our patients was also predictable based on the type of anorectal defect and the character of the sacrum irrespective of the presence of tethered cord. eighteen patients underwent surgical untethering of the cord, and none had any significant change in bowel or urinary function postoperatively. No patient with tethered cord experienced incontinence that could be attributed to the cord defect alone. This study suggests that tethered cord occurs more frequently in patients with severe anorectal defects, sacral hypodevelopment, myelodysplasia, presacral mass, sacral hemivertebrae, or a single kidney, or in those with an anorectal defect with poor functional prognosis. At present no solid evidence supports the concept that tethered cord by itself affects the functional prognosis of patients with anorectal malformations. Also, there is no good evidence demonstrating that surgical untethering improves the drognosis.

Studies show that recent generations of college students have a learning style with identifiable characteristics. Library instruction efforts must adapt to these learning styles. Course management software (CMS), such as Blackboard, is one resource available to ...

The main objective of this paper is to examine cultural differences and technology acceptances from students of two universities, one is from a European country: Spain, and the other is in Latin America: Chile. Both of them provide their students with e-learning platforms. The technology acceptance model (TAM) and Hofstede's cultural dimensions are the tools used to measure the acceptance and use of web-based learning platforms and cultural diversity of respondents, respectively. In summary, we can affirm that the sample of tertiary Spanish and Chilean students are culturally different with regard to some of Hofstede's dimensions, but their behavior of acceptance of e-learning technology globally matches according to the TAM model. This study provides relevant implications for on-line courses managers' who have tertiary students from different nationalities.

Laboratory work assignments are very important for computer science learning. Over the last 12 years many students have been involved in solving such assignments in the authors' department, having reached a figure of more than 400 students doing the same assignment in the same year. This number of students has required teachers to pay special attention to conceivable plagiarism cases. A plagiarism detection tool has been developed as part of a full toolset for helping in the management of the laboratory work assignments. This tool defines and uses four similarity criteria to measure how similar two assignment implementations are. The paper describes the plagiarism detection tool and the experience of using it over the last 12 years in four different programming assignments, from microprogramming a CPU to system programming in C.

We chronicle-in both an historical and bibliographic framework-the discussion of rhetorics of empowerment and disempowerment throughout the last 15 years, and we also examine the promises and perils of current trends in online teaching and learning, with a special emphasis on the role of universities in promoting distance education. This article addresses the question cui bono?, or who benefits, from the rush to technologize teaching and learning? We address the extent to which the continued rush to technologize teaching and learning is a perilous return to a rhetoric of empowerment that as compositionists we must continue to interrogate critically; we question how, in an era of 24/7 learning, students may or may not benefit and also how teachers may lose out, based on the increased workload and course management surrounding online learning.

The Web is used for many purposes in education, such as the publication of course management information, centralized distribution of course material, and supporting on-line discussions between instructors and students or among the students themselves. Leveraging off the Web for educational activities both inside and outside the classroom produces a dynamic educational repository. In this paper, we present work that explicitly attempts to connect in-class activity, in the form of multimedia, Web-accessible captured lectures, with collaborative discussion spaces.

As a report of a working group at ITiCSE 2006, this paper provides a vision of how visualizations and the software that generates them may be integrated into hypertextbooks and course management systems. This integration generates a unique synergy that we call a Visualization-based Computer Science Hypertextbook (Viz-CoSH). By borrowing features of both traditional hypertextbooks and course management systems, VizCoSHs become delivery platforms that address some of the reasons why visualizations have failed to find widespread use in education.

There is a great need for health and safety advisers/managers to act as agents of change, both in respect to the technology of the company and the design of its workplaces, and in the organisation of the company health and safety management system. This article reports on the development of training to meet these increasing needs. The postgraduate masters course 'Management of Safety, Health and Environment' of the Delft University of Technology has now introduced a course-module of 1 week, addressing the issue of the learning organisation and the specific role of the safety adviser/manager. The course-module starts from the assumption that for a health and safety adviser/manager his or her personal effectiveness and ability to influence and stimulate others are qualities as important to a company as the quality of a safety and health management system. This paper will describe the development in the role of the safety adviser/manager and the mainstream thinking on change management and training. The consequence for the content and programme features of the course-module is presented as well as the results of the evaluation of its effectiveness. # Safety Science 41 www.elsevier.com/locate/ssci 0925-7535/02/$ -see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. P I I : S 0 9 2 5 -7 5 3 5 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 5 0 -9

The TQM principles has been applied successfully into private companies over the years: the present challenge is if this approach could be, and how, proficiently applied also to Public Administrations (PAs). The PAs usually have an high degree of complexity that unable the application of well knows methodology for the improvement of their performances , starting from a poor experience in the task and even few resources to be dedicated to. This paper proposes a simplified model to bring the TQM principles into reality for a PA. The model is based both on EFQM auto evaluation model and Six Sigma approach specifically designed for PA processes. The general idea is to define a simple but rigorous approach to evaluate and improve the health status of a single process without considering the whole organization. This is limiting respect to a global evaluation but allows the application of the studied approach in a very reduced time and with a little preventive training. This model has been applied to a variety of administrative processes of the University of Firenze and a case study regarding the Master courses management is reported.

We describe an evolving praxeology for Systems Practice for managing complexity built on 30 years of developing supported open learning opportunities in the area of Systems within the curriculum of The Open University (UK). We ground this description in two specific examples of how notions of participation are incorporated conceptually and practically into a learners programme of study by considering: (i) the postgraduate course 'Environmental Decision Making. A Systems Approach' (T860) and (ii) the undergraduate course 'Managing complexity. A systems approach' (T306).

Studying fundamental computer architecture and organization topics requires a significant amount of practical work if students are to acquire a good grasp of the theoretical concepts presented in classroom lectures or textbooks. The use of simulators is commonly adopted in order to reach this objective. However, as most of the available educational simulators focus on specific topics, different laboratory assignments

Potentially, golf courses could act as wildlife refuges under adequate golf course management. We assessed the impacts of golf course managements on arthropod communities by analyzing arthropod community data. Arthropods were collected using a sweeping-net method from turf areas. Information of management applied in each golf course such as frequency of chemical use, length of grass was obtained by field measurements and also from interviews based on management records with green keepers. In total, 92 invertebrate families were collected. Of 44 frequently appearing families, the number of individuals in 22 arthropods families such as Delphacidae and Deltocephalidae were associated with some kind of course management features. Length of grass was the most influential factor to those families. After removing the effect of the grass length by regression analysis, herbicide affected six families. The effects of frequency of the use of fungicide and insecticide were not detected in this study.

Little is known about the behaviour of central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) in the young. We studied the course and visual outcome in 25 patients with CRVO aged less than 40 years with special reference to the association with underlying systemic disorders. Eight patients had ischaemic CRVO while 17 had non-ischaemic CRVO. Systemic disorders associated with ischaemic CRVO included end-stage renal disease in 3, and hypercholes terolaemia, \3-thalassaemia and hypertension in 1 each. All patients with ischaemic CRVO had unusually severe disease and a rapid downhill course. Management included pan retinal photocoagulation in 7 eyes, trabecu lectomy with 5-fluorouracil in 3 eyes and cyclocryopexy in 2 eyes. Despite this 3 eyes became phthisical and the final visual acuity in all eyes ranged from no light per ception to 6/60. Three patients with end-stage renal disease died within 15 months of diagnosis of venous occlusion. Central retinal vein occlusion (CRVO) is seen typically in the elderly population and is often associated with hyper tension, 1 arteriosclerosis,2 hypercoagulable states3 or glaucoma.4 It comprises two distinct entities: a mild non ischaemic and a severe ischaemic variety.5 In reported series up to 10% of the CRVO patients are less than 40 years of age.6,7 In the young, CRVO has been reported to be frequently mild and non-ischaemic,8 though occur rence of ischaemic CRVO is not unknown.9 This prospec tive study describes our observations of ischaemic CRVO in 8 patients, with special reference to its severity, course, visual outcome and the pathogenetic role of underlying systemic disorders. MATERIAL AND METHODS Twenty-five consecutive patients aged 40 years or less suf fering from CRVO who came under our observation

Paper is directed to improvement of a FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) procedure in the field of reflow lead free soldering by the use of an ontology paradigm. Some ontology editor tools, suitable for our intention, are presented. Particular phases of ontology utilization for development of more exact approach to the FMEA procedure of reflow lead free soldering are analyzed. A proposal of a user's guide for the FMEA procedure based on an ontology paradigm is presented. This user's guide is included in university courses Management of Production Quality and Complex Quality Control provided by the Department of Electro-Technology.

Both undergraduate and graduate courses are experiencing a migration away from the traditional classroom and toward a greater emphasis for electronic delivery of content. This trend cuts across all departments and schools in the university system. In this study, perspective of students from business schools, towards expectations and satisfaction from information and communication technologies usage, was studied. The perception was taken at two times. One was before the use of a learning management system, Moodle, in course management and delivery and the other was after using Moodle. The findings indicated that there is a gap between what is expected and what is being given in terms of ICT usage. Also, the satisfaction of the students significantly improved with the use of a specialized software for learning.

Distance education has become commonplace on many university campuses throughout the United States. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that distance education has also become commonplace in a few agricultural education departments. However, little is empirically known about the use of distance education within agricultural education departments. The purpose of this study was to obtain baseline data for distance education activities in agricultural education departments and programs at higher education institutions. A census of the department chairs or programs leaders was used to gather data using a bimodal data collection method. An 82% response rate was achieved. Results indicated that over two-thirds of the agricultural education departments offered distance education courses. Course management software was the technology used most to deliver courses, closely followed by the Internet. The most frequent academic level of distance education courses offered was graduate courses. The average department had just over three faculty members who taught distance education courses. From an administrative perspective, the biggest motivating factor for agricultural education faculty to teach distance education courses was to provide better service to their clientele. Also from an administrative perspective, the overwhelming barrier to distance education in agricultural education departments was time constraints of faculty members.

The aim of the study was to present symptoms, laryngological Wndings, clinical course, management modalities, and consequences of vascular lesions of vocal fold. This study examined 162 patients, the majority professional voice users, with vascular lesions regarding their presenting symptoms, laryngological Wndings, clinical courses and treatment results. The most common complaint was sudden hoarseness with hemorrhagic polyp. Microlaryngoscopic surgery was performed in 108 cases and the main indication of surgery was the presence of vocal fold mass or development of vocal polyp during clinical course. Cold microsurgery was utilized for removal of vocal fold masses and feeding vessels cauterized using low power, pulsed CO 2 laser. Acoustic analysis of patients revealed a signiWcant improvement of jitter, shimmer and harmonics/noise ratio values after treatment. Depending on our clinical Wndings, we propose treatment algorithm where voice rest and behavioral therapy is the integral part and indications of surgery are individualized for each patient.

In this paper, we describe the development and functionality of the LearningOnline Network with CAPA (LON-CAPA; http://www.lon-capa.org/) system. We summarize published findings obtained over the years regarding its content sharing and online assessment features, and present some new findings on gender differences in the usage of online homework.

This paper describes the development of and initial experiences with WebCMS (a web-based course management system), a learning management system developed in the School of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). The system was developed to facilitate existing CSE practices and overcome limitations of existing CSE course management tools, but has evolved into a generic on-line course management platform. It also provides some insight into what can be achieved towards on-line learning by a single programmer using a collection of open-source tools.

The prevalence of online distance education courses requires university faculty to face new challenges and make new decisions in the areas of course management and design, delivery method, student communication media, creation of an engaging learning environment, assessment , and use of new technologies. The purpose of this study was to ascertain if university faculty in the University of North

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about what a statistics curriculum should contain, and which elements are important for different types of students. For the most part, attention has been understandably focused on the introductory statistics course. This course services thousands of students who take only one statistics course. In the United States, the course typically fulfills a general education requirement of the university or a degree program. There has also been considerable activity regarding the use of computers to present statistical concepts and to leverage the Web and course management software to interact with students. Recently, there has been debate as to whether statisticians should make ambitious changes using resampling, the bootstrap, and simulation in place of the more traditional mathematical topics that are seen as the fundamentals or origins of the field (Cobb, 2007). It is unclear that we are achieving the goals of basic statistical literacy by focusing on formulae or even by concentrating almost exclusively on methodology. Instead, we believe the field and students would be significantly better served by showing the challenges and applicability of statistics to everyday life, policy, and scientific decision making in many contexts, and by teaching students how to think statistically and creatively. In contrast to the activity at the introductory level, there has been much less attention paid to updating the statistics curricula for other categories of students. While smaller in number, these students—undergraduate majors and minors, masters, and doctoral students—are very important, as they are the ones who will use statistics to further the field and improve the quality of research. Other disciplines (e.g., biology, geo graphy, and political and social sciences) are increasingly appreciating the importance of statistics and including statistical material in their curricula. Further, statistics has become a broader subject and field. However, the statistics curricula at these levelshave not changed much past the introductory courses. Students taking courses for just 2 years may not see any modern statistical methods, leading them to a view that the important statistical ideas have all been developed. More importantly, few students will see how these methods are really used, and even fewer will know at the end of their studies what a statistician actually does. This is because statisticians very rarely attempt to teach this; instead, they labor over the details of various methodologies. The statistics curricula are based on presenting an intellectual infrastructure in order to understand the statistical method. This has significant consequences for improved quantitative literacy. As the practice of science and statistics research continues to change, its perspective and attitudes must also change so as to realize the field's potential and maximize the important influence that statistical thinking has on scientific endeavors. To a large extent, this means learning from the past and challenging the status quo. Instead of teaching the same concepts with varying degrees of mathematical rigor, statisticians need to address what is missing from the curricula. In our work, we look at what statistics students might do and howstatistics programs could change to allow graduates to attain their potential.

Purpose – Course management systems (CMS) have an increasing role in information technologies found in all schools and learning environments today. Commonly, the backbone for how faculty teach distance education, CMS also has a role in classroom activities as faculty and instructors mount curriculum for students to consult and use at their own level and pace. Design/methodology/approach – This article

This paper describes some experiences with online web courses. To manage the courses we developed a system, the "WEB Course Control" (WebCC). This software allows the monitoring of the students navigation over the instructional material, providing important feedback to instructional designer through collected statistics, such as most accessed pages or media, frequency and size of navigation jumps. Some statistics results are shown and discussed.

The citizens benefit of technological progress in an equitable and non-discriminatory way in the Knowledge Society. Being part of the long-term governmental strategy, the permanent upgrading of the access to information and expanding of the Internet represent the main pillars of the actions developed in the field of education. In this direction, the implementation of ICT in the teaching process led to the change of the educational perspectives and instruments. As example, the concept of e-learning brings together modern methods of interaction by using ICTs. Many educational projects have promoted and introduced e-learning as an alternative to traditional education. Even for teachers, the on-line training programs represent a good option to increase their knowledge in their related areas. In this respect, the European Socrates Comenius 2.1 Project "VccSSe -Virtual Community Collaborating Space for Science Education" (128989-CP-1-2006-1-RO-COMENIUS-C21) promoted the use of virtual instrumentation and experiments as new teaching methods for the Mathematics and Science teachers. As the training sessions were developed under the Moodle course management system, this paper presents some aspects related to the training process made in the frame of the project and other considerations regarding the usefulness of the distance course, taking into consideration the participants' opinions.

The vast majority of Spanish universities have integrated Moodle as a Learning Management System (LMS). This is because, in comparison with other LMS, Moodle is a feasible and more effective means for didactic usage. But there are still few studies on the pedagogical impact of Moodle in teaching. Thus, there are a lot of questions to be answered, for instance: What do students know about the tools provided by Moodle? How are these tools used in their training? Are they satisfied with the use of these tools? Which are the needs of teachers? Is the usage of Moodle related with the improvement of teaching? What is the impact of Moodle in the development of professional competencies? The aim of this paper is to understand, analyze and compare the student's perceptions on the didactic usages of Moodle at university teaching. To this end, this study takes a survey design, with the intentional non-random sample of 178 students from Primary Education degree and Social Education degree of Cuenca Campus in the University of Castilla-La Mancha. For collecting information, an ad hoc questionnaire, consisting of 5 dimensions and 118 variables, has been used. Data reveal the relevance of Moodle in university teaching: the role that it plays to visualize the teaching outline and to exchange information. To sum up, students show a high degree of satisfaction, but identify some limitations related to teacher training and technical issues.

This article describes an undergraduate course, Management Skills, that builds tacit knowledge and develops reflective learning skills. In this course, management students teach basic business concepts to elementary school children and manage a business project with the children for 3 months. The business project requires management students to apply their conceptual knowledge in marketing, human resources, and operations management to

Web-based course management and delivery is regarded by many institutions as a key factor in an increasingly competitive education and training world, but the systems currently available are largely unsatisfactory in terms of supporting collaborative work and access to practical science facilities. These limitations are less important in areas where "pen-and-paper" courseware is the mainstream, but become unacceptably restrictive when student assignments require real-time teamwork and access to laboratory equipment. This paper presents a web-accessible workbench for electronics design and test, which was developed in the scope of an European IST project entitled PEARL, with the aim of supporting two main features: full web access and collaborative learning facilities.

Student attitudes are one of the most important factors when assessing the quality of a distance education program . When examining the research base, a few studies were found that examined the use of student attitudes in evaluating distance education (Biner, 1993;. However, sufficient research does not exist to develop a broader picture of the use of student attitudes, particularly when examining agriculturally related institutions. The purpose of this case study was to develop a picture of how instruments that assess student attitudes are used in the distance education evaluation practices of higher education institutions that deliver agriculturally related content. When examining the institutions in this case study, most are delivering distance education to both undergraduate and graduate students. Most of the institutions are using course management software and video conferencing for delivering instruction. Instructors are the most common focus of evaluations, closely followed by course organization and delivery. The most common method for developing a distance education evaluation instrument was to make a few revisions to the on-campus instrument already utilized at each institution.

The idea that the teaching of statistics should emphasise the understanding of statistical concepts and methods, and also encourage the students to acquire awareness of how important it is to be able to assess the mass of statistical information they come across every day has a similar consensus. The achievement of these aims is facilitated only if students, in their learning experience, are asked to handle concrete problems based on real settings. In that respect, a relevant contribution has been given by David Moore (1997), who suggests that &quot;the most effective learning takes place when content, pedagogy and technology reinforce each other in a balanced manner&quot;. This framework, however, rarely finds concrete application in schools, especially in our country. Here the teaching of statistics, besides being marginal and incorporated in the mathematical curriculum, is very often dealt in an abstract and formal way. There is very limited emphasis on the meaning of concepts an...

***Invited as a paper from E-Learn 2005*** For organisations with hierarchical management and training cultures, e-learning provides opportunities for standardising content, delivery and course management while challenging traditional teacher-student relationships. This research based case study of the Australian Army provided a longitudinal perspective of the diverse factors influencing the development of an e-learning culture. In particular, instructors' perspectives articulated the diversity of interactions between the organisational culture, the learning environment, learners' characteristics and the instructors' role. As the adopters of e-learning, instructors were balancing organisational requirements with their perspectives of the role of e-learning. Providing instructors with some control and flexibility to manage e-learning delivery had reduced resistance and enabled them to develop a range of e-learning models to meet learners' needs. Thus, encouraging coherence between learners' needs, instructors' perspectives and the organisational culture contributes to the development of a supportive e-learning culture.

Abstract—The AVANTE Architecture described in this paper, implements a WBI environment based on CORBA distributed software components for course management, user authentication, collaborative work, database access, presentation, and other services. ...

This study examines students' perception toward their learning experience in an e-learning environment where active learning through regular and routine graded discussion activities/assignments is expected. Attention was given to the variables of age; gender; increased experience with online courses; and increased proficiency with the course management system. Gender was found to be a significant factor in regards to students' perception toward their learning experience in online courses. Discussion is carried out based on the results of the study. The discussion then shifts to a focus upon strengthening active learning in online courses and common ways in which active learning can be used effectively in online courses. Conclusions and recommendations for future research complete the paper.

Many tertiary institutions tout their implementation of e-learning technology as a way to lure prospective students, and promised implementation of e-learning strategies in college programs is crucial for securing valuable federal government grants. At the core of most e-learning strategies is the institution’s course management system (CMS). A CMS facilitates efficient course management, increased learning outcomes, and greater student autonomy. However, getting faculty and staff to adopt the CMS has proved challenging (Black, Beck, Dawson, Jinks & DiPietro, 2007). This project is considering how e-learning administrators at a private university in Tokyo can both encourage their faculty to utilize their CMS and provide sufficient training in how to apply the CMS tools in their language courses. Applying a modified technology acceptance model (TAM) (Alharbi & Drew, 2014), teachers in an English as a lingua franca program were asked to share their opinions about the Blackboard® CMS. The presenters will reflect on the teachers' beliefs about the CMS' ease of use, perceived usefulness and attitudes toward usage. Participants in this presentation will learn how to apply the TAM model to gauge teacher perceptions of CMSs and consider strategies for augmenting and increasing the application of this ICT tool in their teaching contexts.

The purpose of this investigation was two-fold: 1) to help academic institutions make informed decisions when they purchase or upgrade course management software (aka learning management software or LMS) products and 2) to help developers make informed decisions when they plan for product development and marketing.

This work presents an approach that allows educators without programming skills to build and deploy Web-based experimentation environments. Conscious of the need to move existing Web based course management tools (WBCMT) from document-centered framework to services-centered one we propose a structured composite active document (SCAD) model as a hybrid model to assemble heterogeneous and active components. Based on this SCAD model, educators can use the authoring tool to integrate and manage ...

The evaluation of instructional products is widely recognized as an essential activity of any teaching-learning process. Instructional products, such as online courses, training programs, tutorials, instructional modules, course management systems, and web-based study guides, are required to be evaluated during their development, usage or at the end of the learning process. This kind of evaluation is not a simple process. It demands the use of resources, such as people, tools, methods and time, which must be properly planned and controlled to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We describe, in this paper, an evaluation method for guiding educators, teachers, and instructional designers to evaluate different types of instructional products. The proposed method intends to solve problems that were identified in the existing evaluation methods, such as the lack of generality, adaptability and manageability. This method is general, complete, technique independent, well-structured and adaptable. Its design was based on principles and concepts taken from Method Engineering and Software Engineering. It is composed of a process model, a product model, and a team model. These three components are properly integrated in order to effectively guide an evaluation team during the process of evaluating instructional products. Its main contribution is in providing a general methodological framework that can be easily adapted to evaluate a variety of instructional products.