Trainers have long relied on visual content to make their training more effective. As the use of computer-based delivery has become an accepted method of distributing training and instructional materials, a system of standardizing the development and delivery of training workshops was worthy of considerable attention. The study concludes that while many of the older studies do not directly address the use of computer-based presentation applications, a development process can be achieved to streamline the creation of instructional content while maintaining consistency and quality in the content created.

The project presents a web-based component for a tutor training program at College of the Desert, Palm Desert, California. The application is designed to be responsive and adaptable to the tutor's needs. It also addresses the logistic and pedagogical problems that plague many community college tutor trainers and helps to mitigate this through an online instructional system that facilitates communication among the tutors so that learning can occur in a situated context.

D.Ed. / In South Africa the water and sanitation sector faces many problems in the delivery of services to ensure that all South Africans have access to safe and sufficient water resources and adequate sanitation to meet their needs. Local government, mandated to supply these services, has a lack of resources including trained human resources. Distance education learning programmes could be one way of addressing the lack of trained human resources. Distance education can reach a much wider spectrum of people, the costs to the employers can be greatly reduced, less work hours are lost, people, especially women, have the opportunity to study whilst still taking the caring role at home, and learners are also able to learn at their own pace and time. To address the problem it was identified that a framework for the development of outcomes-based distance education learning programmes for adult learners would be beneficial to the programme planners and educators who plan and design distance education learning programmes. The framework was developed based on the research literature explored. A literature study of three issues namely: outcomes-based education, facilitation of adult learning and distance education was undertaken. Theoretical underpinnings were extrapolated from the literature study which were used as the building blocks for the framework. To establish the theoretical underpinnings for the framework the evolution of competency-based education to outcomes-based education was investigated. It was concluded that competency-based education included core elements such as learning that is not time bound, learning that is stated as outcomes, various means can be used to achieve the outcomes, and assessment is based on the stated outcomes. These concepts have become the focus areas in all developments in competency-based as well as outcomes-based education. In the 1990s the education and training sector in South Africa was transformed, and an outcomes-based education system was adopted. A National Qualifications Framework has been introduced which offers a set of principles and guidelines for the education and training sector. These principles and guidelines were examined. Another issue that was scrutinised was the design of outcomes-based training material for the South African situation. Theoretical underpinnings for the framework were extrapolated from the findings of the literature study on the facilitation of adult learning and planning of adult learning programmes. The characteristics of the adult learner and the importance of these characteristics when planning a learning programme for the adult learner were examined. Two learning theories namely constructivism and transformative learning provided valuable insights into how adults learn in the learning situation. How to plan a learning programme for adult learners using the Critical Events Model, was explained. For the extrapolation of the theoretical underpinnings for the framework from distance education the evolution of distance education, from an informal style of correspondence education to a more formal style of single media correspondence education and eventually to a formal distance education system using multi-media methods was also explored. All these theoretical underpinnings were consolidated into the final product of this study namely a framework for the development of outcomes-based distance education learning programmes for the adult learners in the water and sanitation sector. The framework is designed as an independent document to be used by the programme planners and educators of distance education learning programmes. Within the framework the theoretical underpinnings are applied, guidance and advice on how to plan and design events in the distance learning programmes is given, and an example of how to design outcomes-based training material is included. Checklists are included at the end of every event in the framework. Programme planners and educators can use the checklist to determine if all the activities in the event have been completed. This makes the framework a guide that can be used by the most inexperienced programme planners and educators. It is hoped that this framework will guide many programme planners and educators as they are faced with the immense task of assisting in meeting the challenges of education and training in the water and sanitation sector in South Africa.

A long tradition of progressive pedagogy, running from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and through the work of John Dewey, argues that it is ethically and politically important for students to learn to co-direct the process of inquiry. In a series of recent articles, a group of cognitive scientists (hereafter called ‘DI theorists’) has argued that due to the nature of human cognitive architecture, student-led instructional designs are likely to be less effective than fully teacher-led instructional designs and to exacerbate achievement gaps. Were DI theorists correct, contrary to the intentions of many educators, a great deal of progressive pedagogy would be likely to have negative effects on educational justice. In this dissertation, I argue that the framing of the debate in cognitive science misconstrues the ethical and political value of treating students as cooperative designers of educative experiences. To defend this controversial claim, I advance a Deweyan approach to ethics and justice in instructional design against two recent philosophical challenges. The first challenge, which I call ‘Dewey’s grounding problem’, asserts that Dewey’s appeal to the single ethical and political value of learning is unjustified against dissent and oppressive of reasonable pluralism. The second challenge, which I call ‘Dewey’s problem of elitism’, argues that his call to promote the common good of learning in ethics and politics will sometimes permit or require elitism, aristocracy, or tyranny. Based on the Deweyan ethos I defend, I trace four principles of just instructional design to reassess the claims of DI theorists. I argue that integrating DI theorists’ insights about efficacy and equality as means to create a student co-led community of inquiry confirms many educators’ intuitions: that student-led designs are important parts of developing the skills of inquiry, are well placed as culminating tasks, and are best phased in on a developmental pathway towards greater student independence.

<p>Evaluating software is a universal and complex problem. The question is: how should software be selected and adopted, or rather, which of the software packages is the most suitable for a specific environment? Extensive research on the evaluation of software has been done, but only a few researchers have considered evaluation of e-learning systems based on three software quality characteristics (i.e. usability, maintainability and deployability) for implementation in third world countries. In this thesis, it will be considered how to use a mixed research methods for the evaluation of free and open source e-learning systems in a developing country. The scope of this investigation is the evaluation of two free and open source e-learning systems at the Open University of Tanzania using 33 stakeholders (some with more and others with less computer expertise).</p>

When people do an easy task, and another person is nearby, they tend to do that task better than when they are alone. Conversely, when people do a hard task, and another person is nearby, they tend to do that task less well than when they are alone. This phenomenon is referred to in the social psychology literature as "social facilitation" (the name derives from the "good" side of the effect). Different theories have been proposed to explain this effect. The present study investigated whether people respond to a virtual human the same way they do to a real human. Participants were given different tasks to do that varied in difficulty. The tasks involved anagrams, mazes, modular arithmetic, and the Tower of Hanoi. They did the tasks either alone, in the company of another person, or in the company of a virtual human on a computer screen. As with a human, virtual humans produced the social facilitation effect: for easy tasks, performance in the virtual human condition was better than in the alone condition, and for difficult tasks, performance in the virtual human condition was worse than in the alone condition. Implications for the design of instructional systems as well as other systems involving human-computer interactions are discussed.

I outline a framework for researching the effects of practice schedule on skill acquisition, based upon stage theories of information processing and stage theories of skill acquisition. Skilled performance requires stimulus identification, response selection, and response execution. I hypothesize that practice schedule affects learning in two types of information processing stages: stimulus-oriented and response-oriented stages. The loci of these effects differ based on the stage. In stimulus-oriented stages, practice schedule affects concept and categorization learning via contiguity of exemplars and feature saliency. In response-oriented stages, practice schedule affects the efficiency with which individuals produce a response by affecting response preparation. I evaluated this framework and theory with 4 experiments that manipulated practice schedule and amount of practice, in 2 domains with different information processing demands. Experiments~1~and~2 focused on response-oriented stages via a task that required participants to execute a multisegment movement according to a target time. Experiments~3~and~4 focused on stimulus-oriented stages via a task that required participants to categorize football play diagrams. Within the 2 task domains the amount of acquisition practice was manipulated to test whether different durations of acquisition training changed how practice schedules affected retention and transfer performance. The practice schedule manipulation had reliable effects on performance and learning when task performance involved either response preparation or induction of categorization rules. Practice schedule did not affect performance or learning when task performance involved categorization decisions, after the rules had been learned. Additionally, I report a novel method for quantifying amount of practice that allows comparisons across task domains.

<p>Evaluating software is a universal and complex problem. The question is: how should software be selected and adopted, or rather, which of the software packages is the most suitable for a specific environment? Extensive research on the evaluation of software has been done, but only a few researchers have considered evaluation of e-learning systems based on three software quality characteristics (i.e. usability, maintainability and deployability) for implementation in third world countries. In this thesis, it will be considered how to use a mixed research methods for the evaluation of free and open source e-learning systems in a developing country. The scope of this investigation is the evaluation of two free and open source e-learning systems at the Open University of Tanzania using 33 stakeholders (some with more and others with less computer expertise).</p>

In developing training for new technologies, designers encounter many options in an effort to increase system knowledge and produce effective system usage. Technological advancements do, however, provide the opportunity for more dynamic and interactive training methods. Moreover, technology may require the acquisition of time-sensitive skills. Many technologies have automatic shut-off or low-power functions, like the shutting off the backlight of a cell phone after 30 seconds. These system functions may lead to errors for novice users or for infrequent tasks. To develop effective training for time-sensitive tasks, the learner needs instruction on how to accurately perform the task at a particular pace. One potentially fruitful avenue of exploration is to provide the learning goal during training through the pace of the training materials. This presentation pace is the rate at which training tasks are presented to the learner during training; this pace may be fixed or self-regulated. The goal of the current study was to examine the role of presentation in learning a complex technology using four types of pacing for younger adults (Experiment 1) and older adults (Experiment 2). The results of this study show there seems to be a benefit of self-paced training for younger adults and older adults. These findings provide insight into future studies investigating the underlying mechanisms related to the benefits of self-paced training. Additionally, the findings have implications for the development of training paradigms for time-sensitive technologies.

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Peninsula Technikon, 2004 / This dissertation was written in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Technology in the Faculty of Information Technology at the Peninsula Technikon in South Africa. The dissertation covers the introduction of the study; the reviews of the case, Free and Open Source Software; the discussion of methodology of software project management in terms of software engineering; the analysis of assessment methods; the techniques of using PHP, MySQL, Apache and CVS; and the implementation of a test module. The research represents the consideration of the problem, namely that there are few free assessment manager programmes that can be used for the quick and efficient deployment of academic assessments. An experimental research method was used to with the aim of solving the above problem. In other words, a test management system module had to be designed and implemented to function within the architectural constraints of a developing Open Source Software (OSS) Learning Management System (LMS), which is called Knowledge Environment for Web-based Learning Next Generation (KEWL.NextGen). The test management system is a module developed on Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) in PHP and MySQL application. The scripts of this test module are written under the KEWL.NextGen' application framework, which is based on a close approximation of model, view and controller (MVC) design III pattem. Now the entire source coding of the test module has been uploaded to Web site http://kngforge.uwc.ac.za. This test module can be used for the creation and management of an online test. It provides facilities to create a new test, and to preview, edit, delete and mark an existing test. Three question types have been achieved, namely multiple-choice, true/false and short answer.