Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-252). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (M.Ed.) -- Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1984. / Bibliography : leaves 74-76. Also available online.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains ix, 208 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-142).

This thesis contends that the growing phenomena of multi-user networked "learning environments" should be treated as distributed interactive systems and that their developers should be aware of the systems and networks issues involved in their construction and maintenance. Such environments are henceforth referred to as distributed learning environments, or DLEs. Three major themes are identified as part of systems support: i) shared resource coherence in DLEs; ii) Quality of Service for the end- users of DLEs; and iii) the need for an integrating framework to develop, deploy and manage DLEs. The thesis reports on several distinct implementations and investigations that are each linked by one or more of those themes. Initially, responsiveness and coherence emerged as potentially conflicting requirements, and although a system was built that successfully resolved this conflict it proved difficult to move from the "clean room" conditions of a research project into a real world learning context. Accordingly, subsequent systems adopted a web-based approach to aid deployment in realistic settings. Indeed, production versions of these systems have been used extensively in credit-bearing modules in several Scottish Universities. Interactive responsiveness then emerged as a major Quality of Service issue in its own right, and motivated a series of investigations into the sources of delay, as experienced by end users of web-oriented distributed learning environments. Investigations into this issue provided insight into the nature of web-oriented interactive distributed learning and highlighted the need to be QoS-aware. As the volume and the range of usage of distributed learning applications increased the need for an integrating framework emerged. This required identifying and supporting a wide variety of educational resource types and also the key roles occupied by users of the system, such as tutors, students, supervisors, service providers, administrators, examiners. The thesis reports on the approaches taken and lessons learned from researching, designing and implementing systems which support distributed learning. As such, it constitutes a documented body of work that can inform the future design and deployment of distributed learning environments.

Despite the growth in the size and acceptance of distance education, there have been persistent criticisms of this form of education because it often fails to provide for interaction among students and between students and instructors. Without this, it is suggested, distance education can only be an inferior imitation of the best face-to-face education because learners are unable to clarify and challenge assumptions and to construct meaning through dialogue. Some critics believe distance education's inability to reproduce a critical dialogue among students and between students and instructor can be addressed through the use of two-way communication technologies such as text-based, asynchronous (i.e., not in real time) computer conferencing. Appropriately-designed computer conferencing, it is argued, will facilitate interaction among students and between the instructor and students thus making distance education more appropriate for the higher-level cognitive goals of college and university education. At the same time, using this' technology will retain the flexibility of time and place-independence that is characteristic of distance education. The literature on educational computer conferencing is replete with references to its potential to create a new paradigm of education characterized by interactive group knowledge-building and critical thinking, but there are few empirical studies that have substantiated this view. Little is known about how and why learners participate and what factors may affect their participation. Similarly there has been little empirical study of the quality of computer conferencing interaction. This case study of a university-level course delivered by computer conferencing was designed to address these issues. It was guided by two purposes: 1) to determine whether the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of participation in this online course were consistent with key aspects of the new paradigm of networked learning as articulated in the literature, that is, if students were actively participating, building on each others contributions and thinking critically about the discussion topics; and 2) to determine what factors affected student participation and critical thinking. The results of this study suggest that some of the claims about the potential of this technology to transform conventional and distance education may be overstated. The emergence of a dynamic and interactive educational process that facilitates critical thinking was shown to be contingent on a variety of factors. The results suggest, however, that with the appropriate course design, instructor interventions, content, and students, computer conferencing can be used for these purposes and should be given serious consideration by distance educators as a way of facilitating interaction and critical thinking in distance education. / Education, Faculty of / Educational Studies (EDST), Department of / Graduate

There is a need to solidify the common folklore understanding of what acceptable behaviors are for computer network users. The process of solidification should provide for the development of a paradigm that will be utilized in the formulation of computer use policy. Those who craft computer use policy should move away from the model of a network as a superhighway to a model of a network as a commonly shared resource. The current process for formulating and reviewing an Acceptable Use Policy--an AUP--has generally not evolved as quickly as the rapidly expanding user base and changing demographics. Given the changes in user demographics on computer networks, there is a rapidly growing need to better understand the computer network and to create AUP's based upon questions of social interaction. Such questions might attempt to address the issues of cooperation and sharing of resources. For example, faced with the temptation to behave selfishly--to overuse the resources, how can a group of people (through its AUP) establish and maintain cooperative behavior? To begin the process of answering such questions, this dissertation suggests focusing on the question: "How do privacy aspects of the First and Fourth Amendments impact the formulation of Acceptable Use Policy for an on-line computer network?" This dissertation suggests that privacy is a foundational concept in developing an understanding of the nature of the social activities which are growing in cyberspace. This dissertation also chronicles the transition from informal gentleman's agreement AUP's toward more formalized ones. The research in this dissertation was accomplished by accessing a number of legal resources such as Lexis/Nexis, Westlaw, Web sites on the Internet, a law library, and several Mailing Lists involved in discussions of online legal issues. Other sources, such as government documents, existing and out of date Acceptable Use Policies, and legislative testimony, were reviewed. Personal communication with a number of eminent legal scholars also provided a valuable resource. This dissertation concludes that an Acceptable Use Policy should be in place to govern use of computer networks. The Acceptable Use Policy should become much more of a social contract in the manner of many campus faculty and student handbooks, and, even in the manner that the U.S. Constitution is a social contract for the U.S. population. AUP's should be locally developed by those who have a foundational understanding of: (1) legal principles of privacy, search and seizure, and due process, and, (2) management theory involving the use of commonly shared resources.

No description available.

This research seeks to apply the concepts of collaborative learning and open learner modelling in order to find out whether seeing their own group learner model helps learners improve their learning in a computer-based collaborative learning environment. There is previous work on giving back information about learning performance as a group but very little, if any, empirical work on the benefits of a group open learner model (GOLM). A major benefit of collaborative learning is to encourage learners to learn further from what they cannot achieve when do it by themselves but they can manage with another. Combining this with viewing and judging the information about learning found in a learner model, it was expected that this would increase their learning awareness in order to improve their learning performance. Without such group learner models, learners might not improve their learning performance in the collaborative learning environment as much as they might. To find out whether opening the group learner models helped learners to improve their learning performance we developed a system called 'GOLeM', and we focused on the learner's score on learning concepts and their degree of confidence in their answer. GOLeM was used as a learning environment to test for evidence in relation to two comparisons of individual performance. The first was a comparison of individual performance between participants in a non computer-based individual learning environment and a computer-based collaborative learning environment. The second respect was to compare the results of learning in two different computer-based collaborative learning environments which were only different in terms of whether or not the learners could see their group learner model. The content of number-conversion is chosen for the domain knowledge. Dialogue games and sentence openers are used to implement a chat-tool to exchange beliefs between peers. Bar charts and textual explanations are used as external representations of learning performance as a group. The system was implemented and tested in two versions: paper-based, for the plausibility of the content and the user interface; and computer-based, for comparing the learning results among three different learning environments regarding the two respects above. To make sure what we built was valid – in terms of suitable content applied to the right target group of learners, we did several tests. These tests consist of a questionnaire with multiple choice questions applied to a small group of participants some of whom have a background in computing, and some have no background in computing. The questionnaire was examined for the suitability of its content and for the target group. A modified questionnaire was used with 122 participants who have a background in computing to validate in relation to the difficulty level and item discrimination. Five questions were selected as representative of the domain knowledge for a paper-based design and applied to six pairs of learners for the suitability of the questions and the number to be used, time taken, user interface, etc before developing the computer-based version. Regarding the comparison between participants in a non computer-based individual learning environment and a computer-based collaborative learning environment, the results show there is a significant difference at the 5% level in terms of learning concept-score and degree of confidence in favour of individual learning performance of learners in collaborative learning environment. Considering the comparison of learning between the two computer-based collaborative learning environments, participants who are able to see their learning performance as a group learner models both before the group test and after each item of the group test, have a slightly higher concept-score and improved degree of confidence than those who cannot see these learner models. Moreover there evidence regarding the participant's self-assessment and peer-assessment, their opinion of the helpfulness of seeing the group learner model and their satisfaction in using this system confirms that further study in this area is justified. It leads to the conclusion that in these specific circumstances, learners benefit more from learning and seeing their group learner model. However the evidence that we have here is not sufficient to answer whether it is likely to be true that other systems like this will always lead the better learning. As a result, we plan to continue our work in both similar and different directions to improve the strength of the conclusion that providing group learner model in a computer-based collaborative learning environment helps learners to benefit from learning. The thesis mainly contributes to both CSCL and AIED communities for further study of GOLeM itself. Regarding the AIED community, GOLeM can be used for the further study on the benefits of seeing learning performance as a group learner model both before and after performing a group-test. Regarding the CSCL community, using this GOLeM with either a larger or a wider variety of groups of learners focusing on knowledge contribution during the group-test for the concrete evidence to support that social interaction has an impact on collaborative learning. The evidence that we have found suggests that being able to see a GOLM improves learning. Though this evidence is not statistically significant, this thesis has provided the most thorough empirical examination of the benefits of a GOLM so far.

Information and Communication technologies (further only "ICT") are becoming an essential part of the society, of its structure and functions and impact the lives of individuals. Integration of ICT into education together with a change in the traditional education system into a modern one is therefore seen as an important factor of further development. The paper deals with some of the options of how to utilize electronic support for teaching chemistry at secondary schools. It is mainly the visualisation of the subject matter, proper positive motivation of students and their activation. The paper describes in detail presentation of chemistry using specialized computer software and visualisation of chemical processes. One of the goals of this paper is to present different software for teaching support and to compare them with regards to functionality, user-friendliness and possibilities of other application. Among the selected software there are: ACD/Chemsketch, Isis/Draw, WebLab Viewer Lite, Orbitel Viewer, ArgusLab, Anorganicka chemie, ChemDraw, ChemLab, Basic Chemi and LM Chemie. The significant part of the paper is dedicated to Wolfram Mathematica software, summarizing the essential information about the author, distributor, different versions of the software and their possible utilization....