In order to improve understandability of multimedia manuals, the relationship between understandability and presentation timing among illustrations, closed captioning, and narration was discussed from the perspective of cognitive psychology. Psychological experiments identified understandable presentation timing among them. Three experiments are carried out, using a multimedia manual which explains emergency evacuation in case of earthquake. Participants were required to subjectively evaluate understandability of individual segments included in the manual. The presentation timing of three kinds of elements in the manual had been manipulated in 1-second interval (experiments 1 and 2) and 0.5-second interval (experiment 3). The results showed that understandable segments satisfy the following two conditions: starting a narration a second after illustrative presentation and adding closed captions between illustrative presentation and the narration.

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In this paper, we discuss the evaluation and development of a curriculum for server management and maintenance; this curriculum is expected to be of use in training teachers in the field of "Information Education." The objectives of this study are as follows: the knowledge and skill required for server construction are demonstrated, and this information is put forth in the form of an exercise. A textbook comprising such exercises is prepared, and its effectiveness in promoting learning is examined. The abovementioned curriculum is found to be effective in arousing students' interest in the given subject area and in increasing their knowledge and awareness of information security. Moreover, the study of server construction makes the field of Information Education more interesting to students.

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This study considered how 'communities of practice' (Cops) encourage vocational identities in Japanese knowledge workers. While the importance of communities of practice has been recognized, how to design Cops in workplaces is not well understood. This study researched on 10 Cops, and 30 members of the 10 Cops were interviewed on their attitudes toward career and participation in these Cops. Results of categorical analysis showed the importance of (1) Cops which cross the border of workplaces, (2) diversity of members, (3) attention of coordinators. These results are useful for designing Cops to support career development.

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A virtual motor training environment for feedback control of large motion of upper extremity is proposed. This system includes the cube environment and the three dimensional maze environment, and these environments enable the user to train motion planning, implementing and modifying of motion, and identify problem muscle. The result of evaluation by non-impaired university students showed that user can train and acquire the target motion by using this system.

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This paper describes the development of the Web-based System that enables students to check by themselves their level of "Technical Skill of Electronics and Information Technology Fields which companies require of university graduates". This system consists of tests of 7 fields including Electronic Circuit, C language, Java language, and Embedded System. The evaluation of results of these tests is performed for each distinguished categories of each field, from results of 2 kinds of tests: "Self-Check Test" that examinees evaluate only by themselves if they have enough skill of the field, and "Multiple Choice Test" that requires examinees to give right answers about the field. As the result of this, the level of the skill is determined and shown as their points. Both tests of each field have same technical contents to be evaluated, and each of "Self-Check Test" and "Multiple Choice Test" has 60 to 80 questions for each field. After examinees tried these tests and evaluated learning items, based on the whole result of 1,027 examinees and 6,778 learning items, the system gives to them the result of their relative evaluation and advice to attain the technical skill level that companies require.

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The purpose of this study is to analyze the current situations and problems of the education of media literacy in the state of Western Australia. From the analysis of the curriculum and the subject structure, the lesson plans, and the opinion poll of students, the following three things became clear. 1. All students study the media language in a subject of English, and they can also elect to study the media as a discrete subject. In Year 11 and 12 this course is called Media Production and Analysis. The cross-curriculum of the overarching subjects is expected to be effective to learn media literacy. 2. The student learns an analysis theory of three domains: media language, audience, and context of production. By process of the production activity and utilizing the theory by analysis of the media information, it seems that it was effective for the improvement of the media literacy. 3. Writing is the effective strategy to understand analysis theory. The students learned an analysis theory by the activity of "writing" and they thought that the theory was useful for analysis of information on daily life. However, some students felt the content of the study of the curriculum was difficult and that there seemed to be too much content to be covered in a short time. From this date, it would be expected to reduce the curriculum and to simplify the contents of the curriculum.

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On in-service training for teachers, it is very important that learners (teachers) can improve their educational practice in school as a result of the training. However, it is difficult to make sure whether learners could do that or not on the customary type of training occasion where learners are gathered once at a certain place. On the other hand, a distance training course seems to be effective and suitable for teachers, since it enable them to keep on a certain period of learning with daily practice of teaching. Thus, in this study, we developed a distance training course for teachers which fulfilled three types of requirements about a theme and assigned work, interactions among participants and course management, in order to make teachers possible to link their learning to the improvement of their practice continuously. In our course, learners were required to make plans for their lesson and put it into practice in school according to the theme assigned by the instructor, and the opportunities and system environments for interactions between a learner and the instructor or other learners were set up in process of learning. It was suggested through the evaluation data collected in two years that the fulfillment of above requirements promoted learning in the course, furthermore, the following conditions were important to effective implementation of this course: the theme and assigned work of the course has both generality applicable to all learners' practice and capability of concretization applicable to each learner's practice, and the course manager makes an effort to stimulate interactions among participants in a corresponding manner to each learning stage in the course and lead to a sense of community among learners by encouraging informal conversations as well as formal ones on BBS.

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In this study, we assesed the difference in both the structure of the recognition of problem-based learning and achievement evaluation between pupils and teachers in the domain of the abilities of practical use of information. We created two sets of questionnaire, one for upper-grader pupils at elementary schools, and another for teachers, and conducted survey in the subject area of Period for Integrated Study. The results of factor analyses and covariance structure analyses suggested that teachers tended to see activities of problem solving as highly integrated, while pupils were not aware of such dependency. Pupils evaluated their own performance higher than their teachers in such activities as making summaries and discussion.

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