Course Development

In an attempt to provide educational opportunities for students who are working or who are located at a distance, many universities have developed wholly online distance education programs. These online courses use web technology as a distributed learning mechanism. However, online distance learning in Computer Science courses remains challenging for both teachers and students. Research has shown that there is a significant risk factor for online courses in Computer Science. Course developers and teachers need to be aware of the particular needs of Computer Science students when establishing online courses, if they wish to graduate successful and satisfied students. This paper aims to identify some of the challenges in teaching Computer Science topics online, and identify useful support strategies to enhance learning through the informed use of webbased elearning.

In this paper, the content of two laboratory courses developed at the Department of Electronics of the Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Greece, focused on optoelectronics and optical communications, respectively, is presented. Both of these laboratory courses were developed with the philosophy of introducing a research-oriented approach. Emphasis is given on handson experimentation. In such a way, students get a better understanding of the various theoretical concepts (generation of light through single mode Continuous Wave lasers, transmission of optical power, etc.), and become able to analyze and solve problems associated with photonics components and their integration to optical systems. Coupling of experimentation and research is facilitated with a Marie Curie EU-funded grant for the establishment of a Centre of Excellence via the transfer of knowledge in the scientific area of optoelectronics and lasers. Our approach is presented by referring to specific laboratory exercises, such as the experimental study of a variable optical attenuator developed for research purposes, the development of an X-ray high power x-pinch optolectronic device, etc.).

This paper looks at e-learning initiatives in education in Samoa, focusing on developments at the National University of Samoa (NUS) and the Ministry of Education Sports and Culture (MESC). The main aims of these developments are the provision of access to learning, bridging the technological divide, and the promotion and pursuit of open education resources (OERs) The API Environmental series is an example of collaborative course development by 7 universities to increase access in the Asia Pacific region to online courses in areas identified as having relevance and importance across the region such as environmental studies and disaster management. The NUS CISCO academy funded by a partnership between International telecommunications Union (ITU), UNDP and CISCO was set up as part of CISCO and ITU's LDC initiative to build capacity in least developed countries like Samoa, in an attempt to bridge the digital divide. Developments at MESC include broadcasting lessons for primary schools and the SchoolNet project aimed at providing computers in secondary and primary schools, the development of OERs hosted on a portal and the provision of community access after hours. But perhaps the most viable and prominent of these is our involvement in the Commonwealth of learning developments such as the FLOSS4EduPacific for the promotion of use of open source software, and the advances made within the Virtual university (VUSSC). VUSSC activities include participation in the online course development bootcamps, training in the wiki-educator workshops for NUS staff, and outreach for the Community tele-centres and the SchoolNet centres.

An eleven country internal evaluation of the Cisco Networking Academy program across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, revealed a number of issues related to the globalization of e-learning. The Academy program is a 280-hour web-based course that teaches students to install, maintain and troubleshoot computer networks. It was developed in the US by educators and Cisco network specialists and is taught in educational institutions in over 150 countries worldwide. Hitherto research on cultural in¯uences on teaching and learning have been limited to overseas students being taught in an unfamiliar culture or online by teachers with unfamiliar pedagogical strategies. Through interviews with both students and teachers and observation in classrooms, this study reveals how important local tutors are in helping students adapt to the style of the material and to make a course developed in another country both culturally and pedagogically relevant.

The sudden rise in the number of games courses in Communication departments necessitates examination about how those courses operate, not only to define best practices but also to describe the phenomenon as grounded in communication. Through a series of interviews with games professors primarily located in Communication departments at various institutions, the study delineates the commonalities between game courses and discusses issues of course design, materials, and classroom facilities. The article examines these courses as game spaces to identify how games courses operate in fundamentally different ways than other courses in Communication. The article then outlines how games classes might improve by capitalizing on the strengths—as well as mitigating the weaknesses—of game spaces.

Since the mid to late 1990s, the World Wide Web has been used as a distributed learning mechanism, enhancing the digital learning environment to support distance and on-campus students. Web technology has been adopted to assist learners with real-time studying at a distance. Consequently, Web delivery has grown rapidly and has been used as a vehicle for learning. Many universities have developed wholly online distance education programs. These changes in distance education have been developed in an attempt to provide easier access to educational opportunities for students who are located remotely from the university, who are working or who have other constraints/commitments such as family commitments. However, online distance learning in Computer Science courses remains challenging for both instructors and students. Research has shown that there is a significant risk factor for online courses in Computer Science. Course developers and instructors need to be aware of the particular n...

What Works in K–12 Online Learning provides an overview of online teaching and learning practices. Based on extensive experience and research, chapters cover a spectrum of topics including virtual course development, online learning in elementary classrooms, instructional assessment and differentiating online instruction, professional development for teachers of virtual courses, and the challenges that virtual schools will face.

This thesis reports research results from a learning community composed of faculty, support staff, ministry leaders, and students who collaborated in a professor’sdevelopment of a new course proposal in Christian spiritual formation at Western Christian College in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The professor used qualitative research methods in the analysis and evaluation of the data produced by the group. The outcome of the project was ethnographic data that informed the creation of the course
proposal that included new course application, course syllabus with course schedule, planned activities, bibliography, initial classroom assignments, and initial assessment
tools.

Active learning refers to the direct involvement of students in the learning process rather than being passive receptors of materials. This paper evaluates the implementation of active learning in teaching seawater desalination as an elective course in chemical engineering curriculum. Desalination is a multi-disciplinary engineering science that encompasses elements of water chemistry, material science, transport phenomena, thermodynamics, engineering design, and corrosion. Water desalination is an important course in most chemical and mechanical engineering curricula, where the design and analysis of different water desalination processes are addressed. The current teaching method, however, relies heavily on classical lecture-presentation of the course materials, without any direct involvement of the students. A simple approach that utilizes Excel and Ez-Solve in designing and analyzing desalination processes has been developed. Active learning is the central part of this course de...

Accounting programs around the world have been revising their curricula to include courses in “fraud/forensic” accounting. Yet, an initial review of these courses indicates there may be divergent approaches to their development. This article identifies ...

These principles are peace education; 1) as comprehensive in scope, 2) holistic in organization, 3) values based, 4) presented as inquiry into problématiques, 5) conceptually designed, 6) practiced within a learner centered pedagogy, 7) designed toward developing peace related capacities and the development of peacemaking skills, and 7) intentionally directed transformative learning.

This material is for a course in Psychology or Social Work. The major paradigms of one’s life are essential to one’s personal identity. Your paradigms may be a combination of those listed and others that are not listed. One may live out of a paradigm without awareness, and once the paradigms are identified, one can modify them as desired and even create new ones, such as this one: The Paradigm Paradigm.

Many philosophers and sociologists of science have tried to understand the profound changes that have occurred in science, engineering and technology. In the first part of this paper, I present the work of one such scholar: Jerome Ravetz who, in collaboration with Silvio Funtowicz, has characterised what he calls 'postnormal science'. The purpose of this theoretical part of the paper is to describe what characterises contemporary science and to formulate which competencies contemporary scientists need to act ethically. In the second part of the paper, I present and analyse the course 'Philosophy of Science and Ethics' that I have taught since 2005 to biochemistry, chemistry and nanotechnology students at the University of Copenhagen. The course is intended to prepare its participants for postnormal knowledge production that is scientific work that is embedded in a societal context characterised by uncertainty and conflicting values systems. With this in mind, I analyse the course by relating its content to the concepts that describe postnormal science, and I discuss how the course develops the ethics competencies that contemporary scientists need to work in postnormal science. I will also briefly discuss the relevance of the course for engineering students.

Finally, emphasize the importance of a Distance Learning Core Steering Committee (DLCSC) to ensure stakeholder buy-in at all levels of an organization and assimilation of the distance training program into the corporate culture. This DLCSC should be comprised of communication professionals, information systems engineers, executive managers, education performance experts and instructional designers. Now that the justification behind applying ISD to distance training has been presented, a look at the Instructional Design Model for Distance Training (IDM-DT) developed by Schreiber and Berge will follow with a brief overview.

The attitude of instructors, students, course administrators, and course designers has a significant impact on the quality of a distance education program. The existing literature shows the factors that inhibit these groups from participating in this educational medium. This paper will attempt to review and assess the attitudes toward online education as they relate to the students, instructors, administrators, and designers.

The demand for English proficiency in communication in both social and academic contexts in Thailand has been increasing. As a weakness in English skills may cause the loss of job and educational opportunities, many Thai universities provide international programs to provide their students with opportunities for advancement in higher education and future careers. Nevertheless, English is a friend and foe of Thai students because they are learning English in an unsupportive environment – English is only used in the classroom. More opportunities to use the English language in a wider learning process in and outside the language classroom are therefore crucial. The Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach was thus selected to design a course which aims to develop the English communication ability of the Thai undergraduate students in the international program under focus in this study, since CLIL is in instructional approach that encourages the use of an additional lang...

In an effort to better understand the myriad community associations necessary to keep a nonprofit organization functioning in a climate of scandal and suspicion, students at Augustana College, a Midwestern Christian liberal arts institution undertook an audit of the college's relationships. Once the auditwhich investigated relationships with employees, employers, neighbors, governing bodies, investors, alumni, churches, current students, prospective students and their parents, media, suppliers and strategic partners such as financial institutionswas completed, student teams progressed to developing a community relations blueprint for the college to build upon during strategic planning.

This paper presents the use of the ArchC Architecture Description Language (ADL) as a support tool for computer architecture courses. ArchC enables students to perform several experiments using its automatically generated SystemC simulators, covering topics from simple single-cycle (functional) models to pipeline and memory hierarchy simulation. We show how instructive may be the process of modeling a processor using an ADL and suggest several possible exercises, following the course development structure presented in the classical Hennessy and Patterson's computer architecture didactical book. Moreover, we report how the experience of assigning students to study and to model modern embedded architectures has provided good results on an undergraduate computer architecture course at IC-UNICAMP. The simplicity and flexibility of the ADL, along with its simulation features, proved to be an useful tool not only for research, but also for computer architecture education.

Several studies have shown the influence of scientific reasoning on the conceptual learning of students in courses developed with methodologies that promote active learning. Given that learning styles may also influence conceptual learning of physics, a correlacional study was conducted which used two different approaches of learning styles: the Honey-Alonso and Felder-Silverman models. This quantitative study was performed in two groups of students using modeling instruction in a college course of introductory mechanics. The Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation test (FMCE) was used to assess conceptual learning. The results of this work suggest the dependence of the conceptual learning of physics on the learning styles.

This article introduces the process of incorporating online learning into the Occupational Therapy curriculum at the University of Haifa. It presents a case study of several courses developed using an online format and examines the concomitant development of online skills on the part of both lecturers and students. Naomi Schreuer, PhD, OT, Instructor, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Studies, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, 31905, Israel; schreuer@research.haifa.ac.il Naomi Josman, PhD, OT, Senior Lecturer and Chair, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Studies, University of Haifa. Eynat Gal, MSc, OT, Instructor, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Studies, University of Haifa. Liat Chen, M.A, OT, Instructor, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Studies, University of Haifa. Tsameret Ricon, Ph.D., OT, Instructor, Department of Occupa...

The European Trauma Course (ETC) was officially launched during the international conference of the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) in 2008. The ETC was developed on behalf of ESTES (European Society of Trauma and Emergency Surgery), EuSEM (European Society of Emergency Medicine), the ESA (European Society of Anaesthesiology) and the ERC. The objective of the ETC is to provide an internationally recognised and certified life support course, and to teach healthcare professionals the key principles of the initial care of severely injured patients. Its core elements, that differentiates it from other trauma courses, are a strong focus on team training and a novel modular design that is adaptable to the differing regional European requirements. This article describes the lessons learnt during the European Trauma Course development and provides an outline of the planned future development.

Pedagogies of liberation, including feminist and critical pedagogies based on the works of bell hooks, Paulo Freire and others, were employed in teaching Engineering Thermodynamics with two classes of women at Smith College. Aspects of course development, assignments, and classroom dynamics are discussed, including connecting course material to student experience, emphasizing students as authorities in the classroom, integrating ethics and policy considerations, problematizing science as objectivity, and de-centering western (and male) civilization. Appropriate assessment methods for this type of course are presented with results from the first two classes, pointing to areas for further development. Critiques and limitations of the use of liberative pedagogies in engineering education are discussed, as well as the potential for these methods to address the needs of all students while increasing the accessibility and attractiveness of engineering for underrepresented groups.

A 34-week pregnant woman showed polyuria and polydipsia in the next few days after a severe pre-eclamsia with pathological cardiotocographic recordings and severe deterioration of biochemical parameters, requiring emergency caesarean section at 35 week. A 2,300 g living newborn was delivered. The postoperative course developed favourably, the symptoms had resoved and all laboratory data became normal.

This paper focuses on the developing field of internet-based education as it pertains to the EFL learning environment within the university context. Guidelines and suggestions for approaching EFL course design at the university level are presented in universal terms, with details from one specific Korean university context serving as the experiential touchstone. Humanistic education is the underlying theme of this paper which outlines ways of adapting humanistic learning principles to internet-based classrooms. The learning potential afforded by the internet is weighed against its potential drawbacks. The paper attends to considerations that need to be taken into account at all stages of the course development process: options for internet-based learning, context analysis, student assessment and syllabus design. The proposed syllabus centers on an EFL inter-class cyber-partnership with content-based activities that seek to establish meaningful intercultural relations between the individuals of two distant EFL classes.

The consequence of the low rate of penetrating injuries in Europe and the increase in non-operative management of blunt trauma is a decrease in surgeons' confidence in managing traumatic injuries has led to the need for new didactic tools. The aim of this retrospective study was to present the Corso di Chirurgia del Politrauma (Trauma Surgery Course), developed as a model for teaching operative trauma techniques, and assess its efficacy. the two-day course consisted of theoretical lectures and practical experience on large-sized swine. Data of the first 126 participants were collected and analyzed. All of the 126 general surgeons who had participated in the course judged it to be an efficient model to improve knowledge about the surgical treatment of trauma. A two-day course, focusing on trauma surgery, with lectures and life-like operation situations, represents a model for simulated training and can be useful to improve surgeons' confidence in managing trauma patients. Coo...

One of the essential elements needed for effective learning is feedback. Feedback can be given to learners during learning but also to authors during course development. In the current generation of eLearning systems automatically (i.e. software based) produced feedback is sparse, mostly hard coded, not very valuable and almost only used in question-answer situation. Valuable feedback, for example produced by a human tutor via e-mail, is often possible but this introduces delays and is time consuming. We want to develop mechanisms, based on ontologies, to create a rich supply of feedback, not only in question-answer situations but also in the context of design oriented education. With ontologies we specify (1) the knowledge to be learned (domain and task knowledge) and (2) how the knowledge should be learned (education). We will develop algorithms with which we automatically create valuable feedback to learners during learning, and to authors during course development. Furthermore, we will develop a formalism with which course developers can specify domain and task specific feedback to learners. In this paper we presented our research plan.

In this technologically advanced age, much emphasis is put on collaboration in education at many levels. As a result, faculty co-teaching (collaborative teaching) has grown dramatically. This paper introduces how two instructors from different countries (USA and Turkey), one experienced in online teaching and the other in medical informatics, collaborated successfully, to develop and teach an online medical informatics course. This study outlines effective strategies in co-teaching and student satisfaction with the course and includes various instructional techniques for cost effective technology for communicating at a distance. I.

This paper is about the introduction of blended online and face-to-face learning to the Faculty of Education at Eduardo Mondlane University (EMU) in Mozambique. The main objective of the intervention was to explore the use of a course management system (CMS) within a flexible, student-centred teaching and learning strategy. The author selected two courses, developed an implementation plan, and designed

The paper describes how Harvard Business School's Knowledge and Library Services (KLS) leveraged collective knowledge of its employees in formulating, implementing, and evaluating strategy. The organization was faced with major, disruptive changes in its environment and needed the diverse knowledge and a full engagement of all employees to make a series of strategic shifts. The shifts included integrating KLS products and services with the Harvard Business School research and course development process, developing global scope in information resources and expertise, and trading its role as the guardian of books and buildings for the organizer of the School's priority information assets. In order to achieve that, KLS launched the Environmental Scan Program relying on employees' insights aggregated through social tagging, trend analysis and internal prediction markets tracking emerging trends. KLS also created processes for collective assessment of strategy and a faster way of turning ideas into new products and services. The paper concludes with the assessment of the approach, pointing to a difficult balance between emergent and collective dimensions of strategy process with its formal, structured facets.

It is widely acknowledged that computational science and engineering (CSE) will play a critical role in the future of the scientific discovery process and engineering design. However, in recent years computational skills have been deemphasized in the curricula of many undergraduate programs in science and engineering. There is a clear need to provide training in CSE fundamentals at the undergraduate level. An undergraduate CSE program can train students for careers in industry, education, and for graduate CSE study. The ...

Developing adaptive personalized eLearning has proven to be quite expensive regarding time and cost. Typical adaptive course creation requires input from subject matter experts, pedagogical experts and technical experts. This paper describes a framework for developing adaptive personalized pedagogically sound courses in a developer-supported environment. The paper describes the Adaptive Course Construction Toolkit (ACCT) which was created to provide the course developer with tools to design, test and deploy adaptive personalised eLearning. The ACCT offers support based on pedagogy, instructional design principles, knowledge domain ontology descriptions and learning resource selection.

Otago Polytechnic (OP) is currently redesigning and redeveloping its programmes and courses under an institution-wide initiative called Designing for Learner Success (D4LS). This initiative has several phases—design, development, delivery, and evaluation. This article focuses on the processes and considerations in the development phase of D4LS, which adopted a collaborative and agile approach to developing high-quality course content, learning activities, assessments, and resources. A thematic analysis was conducted from a record of challenges and limitations encountered by e-learning designers in the development process. Four themes emerged as the key challenges: workload and timelines, products and process, communication, and capabilities and attitudes. Recommendations are offered for improving the support for e-learning designers and course developers who are undertaking similar institutional initiatives.

In 1997 Danfoss Drives A/S and the Institute of Energy Technology at Aalborg University in Denmark started an initial four-year collaboration called "The Danfoss Professor Program." The main goal of the program is to attract more students to the multidisciplinary area of power electronics and drives by offering a world-class curriculum taught by world-class teachers. During the four years of the program distinguished professors will visit the university, giving advanced courses in their specialty areas and interacting with postgraduate students. A new curriculum in power electronics and drives is also now being implemented at the university, based on courses developed together with professors from the program. Another goal is to strengthen the research team at the university in the area by fostering new contacts and research areas. Finally, training and education of engineers in industry is a major aim of the program. After 2 1/2 yr, the Danfoss Professor Program has resulted in a significant increase in the number of students and research output of Aalborg University in the power electronics and drives area. It is beginning to be recognized world wide as a model of successful Industry/University collaboration. This paper describes the major goals, implementation and an evaluation of the program.