Online fan communities are an important element in the market success of a videogame, and game developers have begun to recognize the importance of fostering online communities associated with their games. In this paper we report on a study that investigated the techniques used by game developers to maintain and promote online communities within and around their games. We found that game develo...

In this article we report about a study to assess Dutch teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), with special focus on programming as a topic in secondary school Informatics education. For this research, we developed an online research instrument: the Online Teacher PCK Analyser (OTPA). The results show that Dutch teachers’ PCK scores between low and medium. Also we enquired whether there...

The conventional education ecosystem in developing regions is plagued by the lack of good quality textbooks and educational resources, lack of skilled teachers and high variability across student skill and motivational levels [Crossley and Murby 1994; Glewwe et al. 2007]. This paper makes the case for establishing a crowdsourced learning ecosystem that leverages the collective intelligence of e...

Evaluation in continuing education must be continuous, not a one-shot process. Steps in evaluating include: preparing goals and objectives, selecting starting points appropriate to the clients, determining programs and attitudes, measuring progress, interpreting evidence of progress, and then using the evaluation to help students by providing guidance and motivation and helping teachers to clar...

Much of the literature on web based learning shows that one of the main barriers to the effective use of teaching materials is the technology (for example, poor access, slow downloading) rather than the design of the learning materials themselves. Some of these issues are discussed later in the article, but it is vital that teachers take on expert help with technical issues in the planning, des...

abstractthe present study investigated the effect of blended online and face-to-face instruction on the use of reading strategies by iranian efl learners. out of 100 pre-selected learners, 60 homogeneous participants were identified as intermediate, according to their scores on the oxford placement test. the participants were assigned to experimental (n=30) and control (n=30) groups. then, a pr...

Professional development programmes that include teacher collaboration can help teachers meet their professional needs and control their professional lives. They can voice their needs and expectations to peers who share similar experiences. Moreover, teachers can discover new teaching roles and opportunities, develop new skills and find motivation in being a member of a group (Burbank & Kauchak...

The present study investigated the effects of selected presentation techniques including the keyword method, the peg word method, the loci method, argument mapping, concept mapping and mind mapping on L2 vocabulary comprehension and production. To this end, a sample of 151 Iranian female students from a public pre-university school in Islam Shahr was selected. They were assigned to six groups. ...

background because the quality of information on the internet is of dubious worth, many patients seek out reliable expert sources. as per the american medical association (ama) and the national institutes of health (nih) recommendations, readability of patient education materials should not exceed a sixth-grade reading level. the average reading skill of u.s. adults is at the eighth-grade level...