Informing Science

This study investigated whether listening to spontaneous conversations of elementary students and their teachers/chaperones, while they were visiting a zoo, affected preservice elementary teachers' conceptions about planning a field trip to the zoo. One hundred five preservice elementary teachers designed field trips prior to and after listening to students' conversations during a field trip to the zoo. In order to analyze the preservice teachers' field trip designs, we conducted a review of the literature on field trips to develop the field trip inventory (FTI). The FTI focussed on three major components of field trips: cognitive, procedural, and social. Cognitive components were subdivided into pre-visit, during-visit, and post-visit activities and problem-solving. Procedural components included information about the informal science education facility (the zoo) and the zoo staff and included advanced organizers. Social components on student groups, fun, control dur...

Purpose – To explore the use of LexiURL as a Web intelligence tool for collecting and analysing links to digital libraries, focusing specifically on the National electronic Library for Health (NeLH). Design/methodology/approach – The Web intelligence techniques in this study are a combination of link analysis (web structure mining), web server log file analysis (web usage mining), and text analysis (web content mining), utilizing the power of commercial search engines and drawing upon the information science fields of bibliometrics and webometrics. LexiURL is a computer program designed to calculate summary statistics for lists of links or URLs. Its output is a series of standard reports, for example listing and counting all of the different domain names in the data. Findings – Link data, when analysed together with user transaction log files (i.e., Web referring domains) can provide insights into who is using a digital library and when, and who could be using the digital library if...

The term e-learning embraces the use of a variety of electronic delivery media to facilitate and enhance learning. Examples of various delivery media are online (web-supported), stand-alone multimedia, interactive television, virtual classrooms, video conferencing, etc. This paper focuses on web-supported learning (WSL), as a subset of e-learning. The term web-supported learning is preferred over web-based learning (WBL) or online learning, since the learning model under consideration is a blended one, including varying components of contact time and electronic learning opportunities. Although the domains of quality assurance in higher education and web-supported learning are extremely topical, they seldom overlap (Reid, 2003). The purpose of this study was to investigate factors to promote excellence in web-supported learning (WSL) in higher education institutions. The outcome is a taxonomy of critical success factors, as well as a mapping of the taxonomy onto a cognitive model in ...

The communication of astronomy to the public is an important topic that will play an ever greater role in the coming years as a link between society and the scientific astronomical community, while supporting both formal and informal science education. The communication of achieved results is now seen frequently as a natural and obligatory activity to inform the public and

... and expanded only with the primates and most elaborately only in association with humans. ... Ashuman beings used their sophisticated brains to develop dense, informationally rich cultures and ... line), with which they could store and pass on vastly greater amounts of information. ...

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...

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Students in computer science and information technology should
be engaged in solving real-world problems received from
government and industry as well as those that expose them to
various areas of application. This paper summarizes the results of
an undergraduate research project between students in the
Department of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and
the Department of Physics. Students were provided with a copy
of Satellite Tool Kit®, a commercial software product, and asked
to complete research and development tasks based on the
concepts learned in a distributed computing course. This
interdisciplinary and collaborative effort provided challenges,
lessons learned and positive experiences for future development.