Web-based Learning Resources Research Articles

Creating Web-based Environmental Education Resources through Community and University Partnerships

Community groups often seek to engage with schools in promoting environmental education goals. A collaborative initiative is described in which university pre-service teacher education students were encouraged to create Web-based teaching and learning resources, related to rainforests and world heritage areas, for use at primary and secondary levels. The partnership between Southern Cross University and the Advisory Committees of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area took the form of a voluntary competition, which was integrated with students’ university assessment requirements. The factors that influenced students’ decisions to get involved were identified through telephone interviews. Insight was also gained into pre-service teachers’ understanding and willingness to engage in environmental education. The data was interpreted through the lens of participatory partnerships and incentives in environmental education. The study reveals implications for universities, professional associations and community organisations who may seek to similarly collaborate in educational resource development.

Three‐dimensional neuroanatomy: visualization of structure and function in the nervous system

Students learning neuroanatomy are faced with learning the properties of a three-dimensional dynamic system using two-dimensional static images from standard medical textbooks. In addition, medical students in particular must be able to apply such information to the clinical setting. The difficulty of learning this material inspired two medical students to conceive and prototype a web-based learning resource that features three-dimensional, interactive animations which follow each of the major sensory and motor tracts of the central nervous system from origin to termination and demonstrate the functional consequences of specific lesions. Students and faculty have come together to create this resource. A group of second-year medical students, having recently completed a brief neuroscience module, participated in two surveys. First, we gauged their interest in software that could change the way they learned neuroanatomy. After completing that survey, they were given access to the prototype software described herein. Finally, we attempted to ascertain their reactions and gather feedback via a focus group and an online survey. Overall, they indicated this software was a major improvement over existing neuroanatomy teaching methods.

Web-based radiology and medical learning resources for trainee doctors

The first article of this series discussed the use of educational resources on the Internet and how to assess their quality. This article will discuss some quality radiology and medical teaching websites likely to be of benefit to doctors both in training and in daily clinical practice.

ハイパー空間における適応的ナビゲーションプランニング支援

The main topic addressed in this paper is how to help learners navigate in exploring hyperspace provided by existing web-based learning resources in which they can navigate Web pages in a self-directed way to learn the domain concepts/knowledge. Such self-directed navigation involves constructing knowledge from the contents embedded in the navigated pages, along what is called the navigation path, which has been demonstrated to enhance learning. Creation of a useful navigation path influences the knowledge construction process and plays an important role in self-directed learning in the hyperspace. On the other hand, learners often fail at creating a navigation path due to cognitive overload, which is caused by diverse cognitive efforts what may be viewed as meta-cognitive activities. Such meta-cognitive activities hold the key to success in self-directed learning. Our approach to this issue is to analyze the navigation planning tasks in order to design facilities that can more readily facilitate learners' planning activities. In this paper, we provide the learners with a navigation planning environment called Advanced Planning Assistant, which helps them plan a navigation path in an adaptive way before learning the hyperspace. This planning environment calls the learners' attention to establishing the navigation path prior to and separately from learning the hyperspace. We also report preliminary case study to evaluate the usefulness of the adaptive approach proposed. From the results of the case study, we have made sure that they are useful.

Collaborative Web-Based Experimentation in Flexible Engineering Education

The Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, is deploying a flexible learning scheme for selected pilot courses in engineering education. In such a scheme, traditional lectures and written exercises are combined with additional Web-based learning resources. The main objective of this initiative is to sustain the evolution from traditional teaching to active learning and to better integrate the increasing number of educational resources available online. In engineering education, a key activity to sustain the learning process is hands-on experimentation carried out using either simulation tools or real equipment. This paper describes how a collaborative Web-based experimentation environment has been introduced at the EPFL for providing more flexibility to students performing laboratory experiments in automatic control, biomechanics, and fluid mechanics. It particularly describes the eJournal, a Web service integrated in the proposed learning environment that enables the collection and sharing of preparatory notes and experimental results with both peers and teaching assistants.

A local indexing for learning resources on WWW

AbstractLearning with existing Web‐based resources has become popular and important, particularly as the realization of lifelong and distance learning. However, many resources do not usually have a clear description of what kind of learners should use them, what kind of learning goal can be achieved, and so forth, which makes it difficult for learners to select appropriate Web‐based resources. We have accordingly proposed a framework for reorganizing existing Web‐based learning resources with indexes representing their characteristics, which consist of “How To Learn” indexes in addition to conventional “What To Learn” indexes, in order to build a learning resource database. This framework supports a new approach called local indexing, which allows instructors to assess indexes of the resources from their own points of view. This paper also describes a support for the local indexing and its preliminary evaluation. The results of this evaluation suggest that the local indexing support enables instructors to simply and consistently find out how learning resources should be learned. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 34(3): 1–9, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10231

Cautious but Decisive

The Universidad Francisco Marroquín (UFM), a private university, was founded in Guatemala City in 1971. UFM follows a “cautious but decisive” strategy for information services development: a promising and potentially disruptive technology is researched and experimented with on a small scale before campus-wide adoption. The library has provided an ideal testing ground for Ethernet wiring, wireless access, CD-ROMs, multimedia, Internet, and web-based application development. In addition, two spinoff projects have blossomed: UFM's integrated library system is supplied by glifos.com to regional libraries, and the New Media department works with indexed streaming video for web-based learning and local resource archiving.

The Design and Implementation of a Mobile Learning Resource

The convergence of mobile communications and handheld computers offers the opportunity to develop technology that will assist individuals and groups to learn anytime, anywhere. We describe the theory-informed design, implementation and evaluation of a handheld learning device. It is intended to support children to capture everyday events such as images, notes and sounds, to relate them to web-based learning resources, to organise these into a visual knowledge map, and to share them with other learners and teachers. A working prototype system, for children aged 9–11, is discussed and evaluated, as an exemplar of personal mobile systems for life-long learning.

ESTEP: a Web-based learning resource for basic surgical trainees.

A website has been set up by the Royal College of Surgeons of England for trainees registered on the Surgeons in Training Education Programme (STEP). eSTEP has been designed to provide an interactive component to the course and looks to have added a new dimension to basic surgical training.

Webにおける学習者のナビゲーションプラニングを支援する環境について

Webにおける学習者のナビゲーションプラニングを支援する環境について

MERLOT: a faculty-focused Web site of educational resources.

The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) is a community of academic institutions, professional discipline organizations, and individual people building a collection of Web-based teaching and learning resources where faculty can easily find peer-reviewed materials for use in their classes. The MERLOT project is currently supported by 23 systems and institutions of higher education and by the National Science Foundation. MERLOT is developing collections of learning materials from many academic disciplines, including psychology.

Collaborative planning of a Web-based learning resource for primary care education.

Collaborative planning of a Web-based learning resource for primary care education.