published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

<p>Web technologies have necessitated a transformation culture in higher education<br /> institutions. Many of these institutions are employing web technologies whose<br /> development, for varying reasons, is not supported by research in their field and<br /> domain of use. One such field is instructional design for the web learning.<br /> Although there is a lot of research on the most effective instructional design<br /> strategies, the use of research for web-based learning applications has been<br /> limited. <br /> <br /> This thesis reports on a study aimed at transforming the research on instructional<br /> design into practice by designing an instructional design system and providing an<br /> argument for its implementation. The argument is intended to facilitate the design<br /> and development of an instructional design subsystem of the web, that would in<br /> turn offer effective and efficient ways for creating web-based learning materials<br /> to instructors.<br /> <br /> The study started by examining the various paradigms, theories and practices of<br /> instructional design with the intent of using them to enrich and improve the<br /> practice of instructional design in web learning. It undertook a thorough and<br /> systematic review of the literature on instructional design in order to come up<br /> with an instructional design system. The design approach used successful design<br /> patterns that have been used elsewhere, e.g. in software design, to create common<br /> responses or solutions to recurrent problems and circumstances. Instructional<br /> design patterns were identified in this study as the recurrent problems or processes<br /> instructional designers go through while creating instructional materials, whose<br /> solutions can be reused over and over again.<br /> <br /> This study used an iterative developmental research process of finding and<br /> modelling an instructional design process as the research methodology. This<br /> process follows and builds on existing research on instructional models, theories<br /> and strategies, and ensures that the same methodology can be used to test the<br /> theories in the design, thus improving both the research and the design.</p>

This thesis explored the potential of engaging gifted and talented learners in an online community of inquiry promoted by the use of asynchronous discussion forums. It employed a mixed-method, case-study approach where non-participant observation of online interactions and focus group meetings with the tutors contributed to the qualitative analysis of how the members realised participation in the forums. Quantitative analysis of membership data and online questionnaire responses revealed member characteristics of the sample members and patterns of active (vocal and silent) participation. Analysis was inductive and interpretive, informed by an original synthesis of the theoretical perspectives of two theories: the online learning theory suggested by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000); and the cognitive and affective domains for learning skills, proposed by Bloom et al. (1956) and Krathwohl et al. (1964). Content analysis of over 3000 messages posted or read by approximately 4500 members revealed community-based and ability-based characteristics that enabled the group to deal with social stigma, co-construct knowledge and promote meta- learning skills. The study concluded that participation in online discussion forums held the potential to address several of the needs identified by research for gifted learners: The need for the company of like-minded and similar ability peers; the need to develop higher order thinking skills; and the need to become independent learners. In this online network, the gifted learners could receive communal support from other members and tutors who acted as 'mentors' and role models for honing interpersonal and thinking skills such that they were motivated to pursue their interests to their full potential.

Handheld computers may hold the possibility for a one-to-one computer: student ratio. The impact of the use of Palm® (Palm, Inc.) handhelds on information acquisition and use by 5th grade students in a North Texas school during a class research project was investigated. Five research questions were examined using observation, interviews, surveys, and document analysis. Are there differences in information gathering and use with the Palm between gifted, dyslexic, and regular learners? What relevance criteria do students use to evaluate a web site to determine whether to download the site to the Palm and afterwards whether to use the downloaded site's information in the report? How do the Palms affect the writing process? Do the animations and concept maps produced on the Palm demonstrate understanding of the intended concepts? Are there significant differences in results (i.e., final products grade) between Palm users and non-Palm users? Three groups of learners in the class, gifted, dyslexic, and regular learners, participated in the study. The regular and dyslexic students reported using Web sites that had not been downloaded to the Palm. Students reported several factors used to decide whether to download Web sites, but the predominant deciding factor was the amount of information. The students used a combination of writing on paper and the Palm in the preparation of the report. Many students flipped between two programs, FreeWrite and Fling-It, finding information and then writing the facts into the report. The peer review process was more difficult with the Palm. Most students had more grammatical errors in this research report than in previous research projects. By creating animated drawings on the Palm handheld, the students demonstrated their understanding of the invention though sometimes the media or the student's drawing skills limited the quality of the final product. Creating the animations was motivational and addressed different learning styles than a written report alone. No statistically significant difference was found in the scores of the three 6+1 Traits categories, however the Palm users didn't meet the page-length requirement for the research project but the majority of the control class did.

With the advent of the 21st century, technological innovations are transforming the face of education and the school library media center. One of these significant developments is the ability to communicate through the Internet. The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions of Texas public school library media specialists who are active Internet users about their utilization of the Internet, and how their efforts in implementing and supervising Internet access in their school library media centers impact the Texas public schools that they serve. A survey instrument of Likert items was developed that queried these public school library media specialists for their perceptions of Internet use in their schools. MANOVA was the chosen statistical measure for this study. An initial electronic mail-out to 1,232 Texas public school library media specialists (K-12) with Internet addresses were contacted to participate in this study. After a time frame of one month, 196 Texas school library media specialists e-mailed the researcher, confirming their willingness to be a survey participant. All respondents to this e-mail request participated in this study, and a second U.S. mail-out was sent containing the actual survey instrument. The researcher found that the use of the Internet by school library media specialists in Texas did not increase global collegiality from the viewpoint of the survey respondents. Survey respondents felt that an Internet acceptable use policy did not ensure student access to the Internet in Texas public school library media centers. The study examined the relationship between acceptable use policies and Internet censorship, and the researcher found no connection between these two elements from the perspective of the school library media specialist. The study found that school library media specialists believe that their training did improve their students' library research skills. Furthermore, the survey respondents believed that their Internet training improved student learning. Finally, the study found no connection between school size, based on the Texas Education Agency's school classification system, and student access to the Internet.

This doctoral dissertation describes a research study that examined the effectiveness of an experimental Supplemental Instruction (SI) program that utilized computer-mediated communication (CMC) rather than traditional SI review sessions. During the Spring 1999 semester, six sections of an introductory computer course were offered via the Internet by a suburban community college district in Texas. Using Campbell and Stanley's Nonequivalent Control Group model, the online SI program was randomly assigned to four of the course sections with the two remaining sections serving as the control group. The students hired to lead the online review sessions participated in the traditional SI training programs at their colleges, and received training conducted by the researcher related to their roles as online discussion moderators. Following recommendations from Congos and Schoeps, the internal validity of the groups was confirmed by conducting independent t-tests comparing the students' cumulative credit hours, grade point averages, college entrance test scores, and first exam scores. The study's four null hypotheses were tested using multiple linear regression equations with alpha levels set at .01. Results indicated that the SI participants earned better course grades even though they had acquired fewer academic credits and had, on average, scored lower on their first course exams. Both the control group and the non-SI participants had average course grades of 2.0 on a 4.0 scale. The students who participated in at least one SI session had an average final course grade of 2.5, exceeding their previous grade point average of 2.15. Participation in one SI session using CMC was linked to a one-fourth letter grade improvement in students' final course grades. Although not statistically significant, on the average, SI participants had slightly better course retention, marginally increased course satisfaction, and fewer student-initiated contacts with their instructors.

This dissertation creates an information agent that correctly identifies Web pages containing scholarly research approximately 96% of the time. It does this by analyzing the Web page with a set of criteria, and then uses a classification tree to arrive at a decision. The criteria were gathered from the literature on selecting print and electronic materials for academic libraries. A Delphi study was done with an international panel of librarians to expand and refine the criteria until a list of 41 operationalizable criteria was agreed upon. A Perl program was then designed to analyze a Web page and determine a numerical value for each criterion. A large collection of Web pages was gathered comprising 5,000 pages that contain the full work of scholarly research and 5,000 random pages, representative of user searches, which do not contain scholarly research. Datasets were built by running the Perl program on these Web pages. The datasets were split into model building and testing sets. Data mining was then used to create different classification models. Four techniques were used: logistic regression, nonparametric discriminant analysis, classification trees, and neural networks. The models were created with the model datasets and then tested against the test dataset. Precision and recall were used to judge the effectiveness of each model. In addition, a set of pages that were difficult to classify because of their similarity to scholarly research was gathered and classified with the models. The classification tree created the most effective classification model, with a precision ratio of 96% and a recall ratio of 95.6%. However, logistic regression created a model that was able to correctly classify more of the problematic pages. This agent can be used to create a database of scholarly research published on the Web. In addition, the technique can be used to create a database of any type of structured electronic information.

By 2007, one half of higher education students are expected to enroll in distributed learning courses. Higher education institutions need to attract students searching the Internet for courses and need to provide students with enough information to select courses. Internet resource discovery tools are readily available, however, users have difficulty selecting relevant resources. In part this is due to the lack of a standard for representation of Internet resources. An emerging solution is metadata. In the educational domain, the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) has specified a Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard. This exploratory study (a) determined criteria students think are important for selecting higher education courses, (b) discovered relationships between these criteria and students' demographic characteristics, educational status, and Internet experience, and (c) evaluated these criteria vis-à-vis the IEEE LTSC LOM standard. Web-based questionnaires (N=209) measured (a) the criteria students think are important in the selection of higher education courses and (b) three factors that might influence students' selections. Respondents were principally female (66%), employed full time (57%), and located in the U.S. (89%). The chi square goodness-of-fit test determined 40 criteria students think are important and exploratory factor analysis determined five common factors among the top 21 criteria, three evaluative factors and two descriptive. Results indicated evaluation criteria are very important in course selection. Spearman correlation coefficients and chi-square tests of independence determined the relationships between the importance of selection criteria and demographic characteristics, educational status, and Internet experience. Four profiles emerged representing groups of students with unique concerns. Side by side analysis determined if the IEEE LTSC LOM standard included the criteria of importance to students. The IEEE LOM by itself is not enough to meet students course selection needs. Recommendations include development of a metadata standard for course evaluation and accommodation of group differences in information retrieval systems.

The work deals with the possibilities of using internet marketing in the management of the schools involved in the regional system of Czech education. Based on searches of domestic and foreign literature and personal experience, the author explains and assesses how resources can be used for internet marketing activities and how to measure the results of such action. The work is complemented by research that answers the question of how school internet marketing resources currently actually use.