Name
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
Of the many applications enabled by new technologies, the most commonly used in higher education are Learning Management Systems (LMSs), e.g, Moodle, BlackBoard, which enable a wide range of Web-supported courses. LMSs enable the instructors to develop websites for their courses to support face-to-face teaching by means of different tools. Although most of the LMSs offer an enriched environment that goes beyond the usual content management tools (including communication tools and course management modules), these systems are mainly used for transferring information and increasing accessibility of learning materials (1-3). Usually, the content modules in these systems enable the construction of a hierarchical repository of information items; consequently, the instructor is able to create folders and upload files creating variety of repository structures, which are presented to students in the course site. The main purpose of this research is to empirically study the types of online hierarchical structures of content items presented to university students in Web-supported courses. Three research questions are addressed in the study: 1) What is the extent of content items presented to university students in online repositories within Web-supported courses? 2) Which types of hierarchical structures of content items are empirically revealed? 3) What are the associations between the types of structures and Number of Items, Course Size, and Content Consumption? Three groups of variables were defined, describing char acteristics of each course, as following: Repository Size Variables A. N umber of Items: total number of content items in the repository B. Number of Folders: total numbers of folders in the repository Repository Structure Variables C. A verage Folder Size: Number of Items divided by Number of Folders (=A/B) D. Largest Folder: number of items in the largest folder in the repository E. Largest Folder Share: ratio of Largest Folder to Number of Items (=D/A) F. Hierarchical Depth: maximal repository depth (i.e., length of a path from the root) G. Visible Width: number of folders located immediately under the root; this number represents the width of the repository as presented to the students. H. Width-depth Proportion: ratio of Visible Width to Hierarchical Depth (=E/F). Course Characteristics (Independent) I. C ourse Size: number of registered students J. Content Consumption: average consumption of content item per student |
Year | Venue | Keywords |
|---|---|---|
2010 | EDM | empirical study,content management,higher education |
Field | DocType | Citations |
Learning Management,Computer science,Upload,Emerging technologies,Content management,Multimedia,Higher education | Conference | 1 |
PageRank | References | Authors |
0.35 | 4 | 4 |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sharon Hardof-Jaffe | 1 | 8 | 1.99 |
| Arnon Hershkovitz | 2 | 106 | 13.39 |
| Ronit Azran | 3 | 5 | 0.81 |
| Rafi Nachmias | 4 | 350 | 38.59 |