A World-Wide Web (WWW) tem se desenvolvido enormemente, facilitando o compartilhamento de informações. Muito rapidamente as aplicações do seu potencial educacional se tornaram aparentes, especialmente para a Educação à Distância (ED). Neste sentido, a WWW possui um maior apelo, devido a sua capacidade de exibição de documentos multimídia, capacidade de hipertexto/hipermídia e sua arquitetura cliente-servidor, possibilitando a interação entre aluno e professor em ED. Este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento da ferramenta Web Course, desenvolvida no IFSC-USP, que visa facilitar a criação de provas na WWW. A ferramenta também faz a correção automática das provas. Web Course é uma ferramenta baseada em templates, usando formulários HTML criados por programas CGI que são preenchidos pelos instrutores para a criação de provas. / The World-Wide Web (WWW) has been developed largely to facilitate sharing of information. Very quickly, potential educational applications of this technology became apparent, especially for Distance Education (DE). In this regard, WWW has more appeal, because of its capability to exhibit multimedia documents, its hypertext/hypermedia capability and its client-server architecture, making possible the interaction between students and instructors. This work presents the development of Web Course, a tool developed at IFSC-USP that facilitates the creation of tests on the WWW, providing also the automatic correction of them. Web Course is template based, using HTML forms created by CGI files that instructors simply fill in to create tests.

O presente trabalho consistiu na proposta, desenvolvimento e teste de um ambiente computacional hierárquico que vise facilitar a criação, organização e gerenciamento de cursos para serem disponibilizados via Internet, inserido nos projetos de Educação a Distância conduzidos pelo CDCC (Centro de Divulgação Científica e Cultural da USP- São Carlos), tendo como objetivo inicial o treinamento e reciclagem de professores da rede pública, nas disciplinas de física e ciências. O ambiente possui um sistema especialista para o tratamento das dúvidas dos usuários, o Sistema Gerenciador de Dúvidas Online (SGDO) que se tornou uma ferramenta autônoma e hoje faz parte do Plantão de Dúvidas Online do CDCC/USP. O SGDO utiliza o conceito de Education Intelligence, através do uso de data mining, possibilitando ao instrutor selecionar dados, analisar informações, identificar tendência e tomar decisões no decorrer de um curso a distância. A ferramenta WebCourse é um ambiente hierárquico baseado na Web consistindo de quatro módulos: WebCourse Instrutor, WebCourse Monitor, WebCourse Aluno e WebCourse Administrador. Cada módulo possui ferramentas específicas, desenvolvidas para as necessidades dos agentes participantes do ambiente (instrutores, monitores, alunos e administradores). O ambiente é dito hierárquico porque algumas de suas ferramentas somente podem ser usadas por certos módulos. Cada módulo está altamente conectado aos outros e todas as ferramentas são baseadas em templates HTML, usando a linguagem script Lite, do banco de dados mSQL, para a geração de arquivos HTML dinâmicos. Todo o sistema é gerenciado através de um banco de dados mSQL, localizado num servidor web, onde os dados são armazenados e recuperados sob demanda. / The present work consisted on the proposal, development and test of a hierarchical computational environment to facilitate the creation, organization and management of courses to be available over the Internet, inserted on the projects of Distance Education conducted by CDCC (Center for Scientifical and Cultural Dissemination at the University of São Paulo at São Carlos). Its initial objective was training public school teachers of Physics and Sciences. The environment has a specialist system for the treatment of online doubts called Online Doubt Managing System (ODMS), which became an autonomous tool inside the Online Doubt Helping Center at CDCC/USP. ODMS utilizes the concept of Education Intelligence through the use of data mining, making it possible for instructors to select data, analyze informations, identify trends and take decisions during a course carried via Web. WebCourse is a hierarchical web-based tool for the creation and management of web-based courses which consists of four modules: WebCourse Instrutor (Instructor Module), WebCourse Monitor (Teacher Assistant Module), WebCourse Aluno (Student Module) and WebCourse Administrador (Administrator Module). Every module has a set of specific tools, developed to meet the necessities of the environment\'s participant agents (instructors, teacher assistants, students and administrators). The tool is said to be hierarchical since some of its tools can only be used by certain modules. Each module is highly connected to the others and every tool is template-based, using the mSQL database\'s Lite scripting facility in order to generate HTML files on-the-fly. All the system is managed through a mSQL database, located on a web server, where data is stored and recovered on demand.

A World-Wide Web (WWW) tem se desenvolvido enormemente, facilitando o compartilhamento de informações. Muito rapidamente as aplicações do seu potencial educacional se tornaram aparentes, especialmente para a Educação à Distância (ED). Neste sentido, a WWW possui um maior apelo, devido a sua capacidade de exibição de documentos multimídia, capacidade de hipertexto/hipermídia e sua arquitetura cliente-servidor, possibilitando a interação entre aluno e professor em ED. Este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento da ferramenta Web Course, desenvolvida no IFSC-USP, que visa facilitar a criação de provas na WWW. A ferramenta também faz a correção automática das provas. Web Course é uma ferramenta baseada em templates, usando formulários HTML criados por programas CGI que são preenchidos pelos instrutores para a criação de provas. / The World-Wide Web (WWW) has been developed largely to facilitate sharing of information. Very quickly, potential educational applications of this technology became apparent, especially for Distance Education (DE). In this regard, WWW has more appeal, because of its capability to exhibit multimedia documents, its hypertext/hypermedia capability and its client-server architecture, making possible the interaction between students and instructors. This work presents the development of Web Course, a tool developed at IFSC-USP that facilitates the creation of tests on the WWW, providing also the automatic correction of them. Web Course is template based, using HTML forms created by CGI files that instructors simply fill in to create tests.

O presente trabalho consistiu na proposta, desenvolvimento e teste de um ambiente computacional hierárquico que vise facilitar a criação, organização e gerenciamento de cursos para serem disponibilizados via Internet, inserido nos projetos de Educação a Distância conduzidos pelo CDCC (Centro de Divulgação Científica e Cultural da USP- São Carlos), tendo como objetivo inicial o treinamento e reciclagem de professores da rede pública, nas disciplinas de física e ciências. O ambiente possui um sistema especialista para o tratamento das dúvidas dos usuários, o Sistema Gerenciador de Dúvidas Online (SGDO) que se tornou uma ferramenta autônoma e hoje faz parte do Plantão de Dúvidas Online do CDCC/USP. O SGDO utiliza o conceito de Education Intelligence, através do uso de data mining, possibilitando ao instrutor selecionar dados, analisar informações, identificar tendência e tomar decisões no decorrer de um curso a distância. A ferramenta WebCourse é um ambiente hierárquico baseado na Web consistindo de quatro módulos: WebCourse Instrutor, WebCourse Monitor, WebCourse Aluno e WebCourse Administrador. Cada módulo possui ferramentas específicas, desenvolvidas para as necessidades dos agentes participantes do ambiente (instrutores, monitores, alunos e administradores). O ambiente é dito hierárquico porque algumas de suas ferramentas somente podem ser usadas por certos módulos. Cada módulo está altamente conectado aos outros e todas as ferramentas são baseadas em templates HTML, usando a linguagem script Lite, do banco de dados mSQL, para a geração de arquivos HTML dinâmicos. Todo o sistema é gerenciado através de um banco de dados mSQL, localizado num servidor web, onde os dados são armazenados e recuperados sob demanda. / The present work consisted on the proposal, development and test of a hierarchical computational environment to facilitate the creation, organization and management of courses to be available over the Internet, inserted on the projects of Distance Education conducted by CDCC (Center for Scientifical and Cultural Dissemination at the University of São Paulo at São Carlos). Its initial objective was training public school teachers of Physics and Sciences. The environment has a specialist system for the treatment of online doubts called Online Doubt Managing System (ODMS), which became an autonomous tool inside the Online Doubt Helping Center at CDCC/USP. ODMS utilizes the concept of Education Intelligence through the use of data mining, making it possible for instructors to select data, analyze informations, identify trends and take decisions during a course carried via Web. WebCourse is a hierarchical web-based tool for the creation and management of web-based courses which consists of four modules: WebCourse Instrutor (Instructor Module), WebCourse Monitor (Teacher Assistant Module), WebCourse Aluno (Student Module) and WebCourse Administrador (Administrator Module). Every module has a set of specific tools, developed to meet the necessities of the environment\'s participant agents (instructors, teacher assistants, students and administrators). The tool is said to be hierarchical since some of its tools can only be used by certain modules. Each module is highly connected to the others and every tool is template-based, using the mSQL database\'s Lite scripting facility in order to generate HTML files on-the-fly. All the system is managed through a mSQL database, located on a web server, where data is stored and recovered on demand.

Technology integration in the curriculum remains a challenge at different levels in the education system. In one Caribbean 4-year college, faculty are expected to prepare preservice teachers to integrate technology in classroom instruction. When preservice teachers are not prepared for technology integration, interventions are necessary to address this challenge of technology integration. The purpose of this qualitative bounded intrinsic case study was to gain an understanding of the process of technology integration by instructors at the research site. Davies' theory for understanding technological literacy and the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge model conceptually framed this study. A purposeful sample of 13 instructors who integrated technology in their curricula and volunteered to participate were observed, interviewed, and provided documentation to explore how they integrated technology in their courses. Data were coded typologically using a priori codes and inductively to identify major themes regarding instructors' challenges and perceptions of technology integration. Instructors were consistent in their integration of technology, increased technology use when they held a positive view of technology, and did not use sufficient web-based tools. They expressed a need for additional technology integration training, because there is an absence of training opportunities offered in the area of technology integration. Based on these findings, a 3-day technology integration workshop was created for the instructors. These endeavors may contribute to positive social change by empowering instructors to adopt pedagogy that can transform the college classroom environment and can support instructors' teaching and learning, thus, preparing preservice teachers to embrace technology in their classrooms.

Atmospheric nucleation is a process of phase transformation like liquid water transforming into solid or gas phase water, which serves as a significant impact on many atmospheric and technological processes. During the process of the atmospheric nucleation, certain 3D molecular models for atmospheric nucleation will be generated, which are main mixtures of water molecules and hexanol molecules. Analyzing these 3D molecular models can promote the understanding for the nucleation and growth of the particles and phases in a multi-component mixture, as well as for the changes in climate and weather. Therefore, the research for atmospheric nucleation can be transformed into the research for the 3D molecular visualizations and comparisons, which are the similarity calculations. Unfortunately, the research on understanding atmospheric nucleation processes is restricted due to the lack of efficient visual data exploration tools. In this paper, the issue of lacking efficient data visualization tools is tackled by implementing our own application to visualize the atmospheric nucleation. The similarity calculation for these 3D molecules is implemented in order to analyze and compare the atmospheric nucleation processes and molecular models. Admittedly, there are various 3D molecular similarity calculation algorithms, such as clique-detection algorithms and point matching, etc; however, these algorithms are specifically utilized in the fields of protein amino-acids and pharmacophore. Due to the large scale of the atmospheric nucleation data, GPU (Graphical Processing Units) is employed in order to significantly reduce the computation times. This is achieved by utilizing CUDA (Compute Uniform Device Architecture) technology which allows us to execute our algorithm in a parallel method. Furthermore, in this research, the knowledge of hypertree visualization is intended to be utilized to enhance the previously developed web-based visualization and analysis tool that allows remote users to effectively mine the wealth of particle-based nucleation simulation data. The research goal is to speed up knowledge discovery and improve users' productivity through effective data visualization technique and more friendly user interface design. Meanwhile, a feasible parallel computing solution is developed to overcome the slow response due to expensive large data pre-processing. The core research of my thesis is to calculate the similarity between the distinct 3D molecules.