The question 'What is the nature of an information system?' is fundamental to developing and teaching about information systems, but it is the subject of debate in the IS literature and is not made explicit in most curricula. Our experience of teaching information systems analysis and design to undergraduate students has prompted us to seek better ways of developing students' understanding of t...

Evaluative thinking (ET) is an increasingly important topic in the field of evaluation, particularly among people involved in evaluation capacity building (ECB). Yet it is a construct in need of clarification, especially if it is to be meaningfully discussed, promoted, and researched. To that end, we propose that ET is essentially critical thinking applied to contexts of evaluation. We argue th...

A teaching environment featuring a visual object-oriented programming language is an improvement over existing object-oriented teaching methods using textual languages. We propose to create such an environment, which will provide a complete course in objectorientation. The course will be based on the key object-oriented concepts and mechanisms. The visual programming environment will avoid the ...

Secondary-level students encounter many difficulties in learning complex systems with hierarchical levels. Scaffolding is very critical in teaching complex systems. We have two complementary research questions on scaffolding: 1. How can we chunk and sequence the learning activities in teaching complex systems? 2. How can we help students make connections across system levels? A simulation-based...

The application of quality processes to tertiary teaching can result in a more team-based approach to course curriculum planning, the instructional design of individual subjects or units, the learning support associated with subject implementation and subsequent evaluation. The "art" of teaching requires more explicit communication within and across different teams that may be involved in each ...

This paper describes an evidence-based quality assurance system for teaching and learning, which takes as its starting point a well-researched theoretical perspective on student learning in higher education. We argue this explicit use of a relevant theoretical base promotes coherence between quality assurance and improvement processes. We outline the principal features of our university’s quali...

A primary aim of occupational therapy education is to teach students how to think like practitioners, that is, how to engage in clinical reasoning. Since the early 1980s, occupational therapy clinical reasoning research has elucidated a language that describes the various types of thinking therapists use in clinical practice, a language that has the potential to make previously tacit thought pr...

In this tutorial we present the system SUBSEXPL that is used for simulating and comparing explicit substitutions calculi. This framework was developed in Ocaml, a language of the ML family, and it allows the manipulation of expressions of the λ-calculus and of several styles of explicit substitutions calculi. Applications of this framework include: the visualisation of the contractions of the λ...

The ability to comprehend and produce phrasal verbs, as lexical chunks or groups of words which are commonly found together, is an important part of language learning. This study investigates the effect of ‘conceptual metaphor awareness’, as a newly developed technique in Cognitive Linguistics, on learning phrasal verbs by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To meet this objective, two intact ho...