conts17-2 Australian Journal of Educational Technology Volume 17, Number 2, Winter 2001 ISSN 0814-673X Contents Editorial .......................................................................................................... iii-vi Problem based learning in the design of a multimedia project ....... 115-130 Iain McAlpine and Rex Clements The role of synchronous communication in fully distance education .................................................................................. 131-149 Gary Motteram Drama online .......................................................................................... 150-168 Jennifer Nicholls and Robyn Philip Reflections in cyberspace: Web conferencing for language teacher education ................................................................................... 169-186 E. Marcia Johnson, Ann Bishop, Anna Holt, Jennifer A. Stirling and Janice Zane A touch of sugar: A multimedia case study to facilitate student dietitians learning about the clinical management of diabetes ....... 187-203 Helen Matters, Susan Milner, David Owies, Susan Vukovic, Caryl Nowson and Jane Winter Seeking best practice in online learning: Flexible Learning Toolboxes in the Australian VET sector .............................................. 204-222 Ron Oliver © 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this journal may be reprinted or reproduced without permission from the publishers. The Australian Journal of Educational Technology is a refereed research journal published three times per year jointly by the Australian Society for Educational Technology and the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. For details on submission of manuscripts, subscriptions and access to the AJET online archives, please see: http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/ajet/ ii Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 2001, 17(2) or for manuscript submission contact the Editor, Dr Ron Oliver, Mt Lawley Campus, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, Western Australia 6050, r.oliver@cowan.edu.au, or for subscriptions contact the Production Editor, Dr Roger Atkinson, 23 Gibson Street, Mt Pleasant, Western Australia 6153, rjatkinson@bigpond.com. Members of ASET, ASCILITE and ISPI (Vic) receive AJET as a part of their membership benefits. AJET’s 2001 Editorial Board, nominated by ASCILITE and ASET is: Ron Oliver (Editor), Edith Cowan University Roger Atkinson (Production Editor) Cathy Gunn, University of Auckland Barry Harper, University of Wollongong Mary Jane Mahony, University of Sydney Clare McBeath, Curtin University of Technology Sue McNamara, Monash University Rod Sims, Southern Cross University Australasian Society for Computers Australian Society for in Learning in Tertiary Education Educational Technology http://www.ascilite.org.au/ http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/aset/ Copyright in individual articles contained in AJET is vested in each of the authors in respect of his or her contributions. Copyright in AJET is vested in ASET (1985- 86), AJET Publications (1987-1996), and ASET and ASCILITE (from 1997). Desktop publishing and HTML by Roger Atkinson. Printed and bound by Dedline Printing, Applecross WA 6153, Australia. Supporting Societies Supporting societies obtain bulk supplies of printed copies of AJET at the same cost as applicable for ASCILITE and ASET members, and access to AJET online articles during the period of restricted access for each issue. Inquiries about supporting society status may be directed to the Production Editor. ISPI Melbourne Chapter http://www.ispimelb.org.au/ Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 2001, 17(2) iii Editorial One of AJET's authors emailed to me recently with a question about AJET: What ranking does it have and how would I find its "impact factor" and "immediacy index" as our library does not have Journal citation reports (hard to believe, but true!) The straightforward answer is "I don't know" (and in any event I would have to do some homework on the definitions of "impact factor" and "immediacy index", whatever they may be). The indicators we have at present include the following: 1. Data on web page access to AJET ("hit counts") shows strong growth (Atkinson, 2001 - see Table 1 below for a brief update). The mid year period centered upon July is a slower period for hit counts, presumably due to staff and students taking inter-semester breaks at Australian universities and midsummer holidays in the northern hemisphere. Access counts for individual articles in AJET show encouraging rates (Table 2). A remarkably high rate continues for McLoughlin (1999), as commented upon in earlier discussion of access counts (Atkinson, 2001). ASCILITE 2001, 9-12 December, hosted by the University of Melbourne and the Biomedical Multimedia Unit http://www.medfac.unimelb.edu.au/ascilite2001/ iv Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 2001, 17(2) Table 1: Selected access counts for AJET 2000-2001 Home, search and contents pages Date Home Search Vol 14 Vol 15 Vol 16 Vol 17 7 Aug 00 35789 4929 8742 9285 951 - 5 Feb 01 45434 6844 9946 11404 3242 - 5 Apr 01 50059 7807 10401 12237 4313 - 4 Jun 01 54517 8802 10752 12831 5276 866 6 Aug 01 58558 9620 11106 13384 6178 1664 Table 2: Access counts per week for articles in AJET Volumes 15-17 (sampling period 5 weeks, 16 July to 20 August 2001) Issue 17(1) 16(3) 16(2) 16(1) 15(3) 15(2) 15(1) Av. accesses per week 70.6 27.6 23.6 22.8 41.1 8.2 14.9 Range 9-100 10-38 9-40 9-37 23-131 5-10 5-22 2. AJET's profile with the Internet's major search engines is very pleasing. Table 3 (below) updates a previous review (Atkinson, 1999). Table 3: AJET's profile with some Internet search engines Search engine and search string Rank of AJET site (date of search); (notes) http://www.google.com/ 1st in about 597,000 results (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology http://www.goeureka.com.au/ 1st in 4286 matches (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology http://au.altavista.com/ 1st in 1554485 pages (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology (select "worldwide") http://www.anzwers.com.au/ 3rd in 2040 (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology (select exact phrase option) http://www.looksmart.com.au/ 2nd match (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology http://www.yahoo.com.au/ 1st of 262000 matches (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology (select exact phrase, web pages) http://www.alltheweb.com/ 1st of 5610 docs (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology (select exact phrase option) http://www.lycos.com/ 1st in 323,818 web sites (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology http://search.excite.com/ 2nd of about 4,816,475 sites (27 Aug 2001) journal of educational technology http://infoseek.go.com/ 3rd in unspecified number (27 Aug 2001) "journal of educational technology" (include double quotes) Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 2001, 17(2) v 3. Although AJET’s number of library subscribers to the printed version is small (47 subscribers, including 7 legal deposit and complimentary subscribers, with some renewals pending), our price per article is surely one of the best values amongst current scholarly journals, being in the range A$1.70-2.70. Furthermore, AJET is free to the Internet after the three month period of restricted access for each new issue. 4. The number of submissions is good, with about 40-60% being accepted. Whilst these indicators are encouraging, establishing an "impact factor" and "immediacy index" for AJET will involve counts of the citation of AJET articles. Many readers are viewing or scanning AJET, but how many will cite AJET articles in their writing? In a preliminary investigation of this question, I counted the number of citations of AJET articles in AJET Volumes 13 to 17 (issues 1-2). Results are summarised below in Table 4. Table 4: Citation counts - some preliminary data for AJET AJET Vol, year (no. of articles) No. of cits Citations of an AJET article No. % Citations of an Aust or NZ Conf Proceedings No. % 17, 2001 (13) 336 17 5.1 29 8.6 16, 2000 (18) 407 9 2.2 32 7.9 15, 1999 (15) 414 4 1.0 23 5.6 14, 1998 (10) 132 3 2.3 16 12.1 13, 1997 (10) 220 1 0.5 28 12.7 13-17, 97-01 (66) 1509 34 2.3 128 8.5 We could expect citations of AJET articles to be at a relatively high rate in AJET, compared with other journals publishing similar topics. AJET’s authors may be expected to be reasonably familiar with articles in AJET - otherwise they would select some other, more familar journal for submitting their work. However, Table 4 indicates that only a small percentage of the citations made in AJET are citations of AJET articles, although an encouraging upward trend may have commenced in 2001. The AJET articles most frequently cited by AJET authors were Freeman (1997) with four citations, and Mason and Weller (2000) with three citations. Table 4 also records numbers of citations of an Australian or New Zealand conference proceedings, because this category may provide an illustrative benchmark comparison for AJET (presumably this category is familiar reading for AJET authors - in the sample period for Table 4, only 3 articles (4.5%) were contributed by authors working in countries other than Australia and New Zealand). The most frequently cited conference vi Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 2001, 17(2) proceedings in the sample period were ASCILITE [1] (51 citations, 3.4%) and AusWeb [2] (18 citations, 1.2%). URLs for these proceedings and for many other Australian conferences are listed on ASET’s website [3]. Does the data in Table 4 suggest that as a source of research references, AJET compares poorly, or competes poorly, with Australian and New Zealand conference proceedings? There isn’t a simple answer because the comparison is complex - AJET doesn’t charge authors, whilst conferences do charge authors; AJET doesn’t provide conference dinners… (this line of investigation will be continued…). Roger Atkinson AJET Production Editor Endnotes [1] ASCILITE Conference Proceedings. http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/ [2] Ausweb Proceedings. http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/ [3] ASET (2001). Proceedings available online. A brief listing for some Australian and New Zealand professional society conferences in the past decade. http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/gen/aset/confs/conf-procs.html References Atkinson, R. J. (2001). Editorial. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 17(1), iii-vi. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet17/editorial17-1.html Atkinson, R. J. (1999). Editorial. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 15(3), iii-vi. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet15/editorial3.html Freeman, M. (1997). Flexibility in access, interaction and assessment: The case for web-based teaching programs. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 13(1), 23-39. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet13/freeman.html Mason, R. and Weller, M. (2000). Factors affecting students' satisfaction on a web course. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 16(2), 173-200. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet16/mason.html McLoughlin, C. (1999). The implications of the research literature on learning styles for the design of instructional material. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 15(3), 222-241. http:// www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet15/mcloughlin.html ASET-ISPI 2002 ASET’s next national conference will be held in Melbourne, conducted jointly with ISPI Melbourne Chapter. http://cleo.murdoch.edu.au/aset/