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This paper addresses social and ethical issues in computer‐mediated education, with a focus on higher education. It will be argued if computer‐mediated education is to be implemented in a socially and ethically sound way, four major social and ethical issues much be confronted. These are: (1) the issue of value transfer in higher education: can social, cultural and academic values be successfully transmitted in computer‐mediated education? (2) the issue of academic freedom: are computer‐mediated educational settings conducive for academic freedom or do they threaten to undermine it? (3) the issue of equality and diversity: does a reliance on computer networks in higher education foster equality and equity for students and does it promote diversity, or does it disadvantage certain social classes and force conformity? (4) the issue of ethical student and staff behaviour: What kinds of unethical behaviour by students and staff are made possible in computer‐mediated education, and what can be done against it? Existing studies relating to these four issues are examined and some tentative policy conclusions are drawn.

It is widely acknowledged that the computer has caused great societal changes over recent years, but the purpose of this paper is to relate specifically to those due to the use of computers in education and teaching about computing. The adoption and use of computers in education was very much a socio-technical process with influence from people, organisations, processes and technologies: of a variety of human and non-human actors.

This paper makes use of actor-network theory to analyse these events and their educational and societal impact. Data were collected from published sources, interviews with those involved at the time, discussions and from personal experience and observations.

Computers have, of course, had a huge impact on society, but particularly in relation to the use of computers in school education there was a different societal impact. Some of this related directly to education, some to school administration and some to student attitudes, experiences and knowledge.

The paper investigates the development of early courses in computing in universities and schools in Victoria, Australia. The paper does not, however, consider the use of computers in university research, only in education.

The paper describes the significant educational events of the era from punch-card tabulating machines in the 1930s to micro-computers in the late 1980s, and investigates the relationship between the development of courses in the Universities and those in the more vocationally oriented Colleges of Advanced Education. It examines whether one followed from the other. It also investigates the extent of the influence of the universities and CAEs on school computing.

The advent of the computer made a significant impact on university and school education even before the internet, Google, Wikipedia and smart phones in the late 1990s and 2000s. Computers in schools cause a rethink of how teaching should be handled and of the role of the teacher.

This paper investigates the history of computers and education in both universities and schools in Victoria, Australia over the period from the 1930s to the early 1990s. It considers how and why this technological adoption occurred, and the nature of the resulting educational and societal change this produced. Primary and High School use of computers did not commence until the 1970s but prior to this there is a considerable and interesting history associated with the development of Higher Education courses relating to computing.

Recent developments in technology have provided educators with an extremely wide variety of electronic tools to assist them in achieving one of their primary objectives – the transmission of knowledge to others. One of the most important uses of these technologies in higher education has been their employment for the delivery of distance education. This article describes the types of technology available for the delivery of distance education (computer‐assisted education systems, audio/video‐mediated education systems, and computer‐mediated education systems), and has documented the effectiveness of these tools. It also discusses the successful experience of the school that pioneered the use of technology to deliver distance in the discipline of social work.

Over the past 30 years, China has made dramatic changes and improvements in various educational areas, including the educational technology field. These changes have been supported by policies initiated by the country's central government. This chapter reviews the historical development of China's educational technology policies, paying particular attention to the evolutionary process, and examining policy features that have influenced Chinese educational development. The Chinese education technology framework encourages the use of educational technology to address more ambitious goals for economic and social development and thus serves as an important catalyst for advancing Chinese education.

This bibliography was originally compiled for the purpose of a Doctoral degree submitted to Loughborough University of Technology in March 1993. The information in this bibliography, which was started in the last quarter of 1989, was continuously updated by collecting data from all the important current journals and abstracting and indexing sources. It covers all of hypertext, including HyperCard and other hypertext/hypermedia systems which are being used for teaching and training. These systems are also used for conducting research in this field. Full efforts were made to cover all the publications such as periodical articles, conference papers/Proceedings, books and reports that were published until the first quarter of 1993.

Computers and computer‐assisted instruction are being used with increasing frequency in the area of health science student education, yet students’ attitudes towards the use of e‐learning technology and computer‐assisted instruction have received limited attention to date. The purpose of this study was to investigate the significant predictors of health science students’ attitudes towards e‐learning and computer‐assisted instruction. All students enrolled in health science programmes (n=2885) at a large multi‐campus Australian university in 2006‐2007, were asked to complete a questionnaire. This included the Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES), the Computer Attitude Survey (CAS), and the Attitude Toward Computer‐Assisted Instruction Semantic Differential Scale (ATCAISDS). A multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine the significant predictors of health science students’ attitudes to e‐learning. The Attitude Toward Computers in General (CASg) and the Attitude Toward Computers in Education (CASe) subscales from the CAS were the dependent (criterion) variables for the regression analysis. A total of 822 usable questionnaires were returned, accounting for a 29.5 per cent response rate. Three significant predictors of CASg and five significant predictors of CASe were found. Respondents’ age and OLES Equity were found to be predictors on both CAS scales. Health science educators need to take the age of students and the extent to which students perceive that they are treated equally by a teacher/tutor/instructor (equity) into consideration when looking at determinants of students’ attitudes towards e‐learning and technology.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

One of the main reasons for the limited use of methods and techniques based on computers and many of the problems encountered in their introduction is the lack of appropriate education and training among managers, professional and technical staff. Many firms use computers simply for routine data processing, such as the basic clerical and accountancy functions, and have not progressed to what they believe to be the more esoteric applications. Yet the computer makes possible the use of many methods, which are not feasible without it and which can contribute significantly to business and technical efficiency.

The development of a K-12 computer science curriculum based on constructivist principles needs to be informed by knowledge of content and process concepts that are central to the discipline of computer science. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Taking a cross-cultural approach and using an experimental design (a SPF-2•15×16 split-plot design), this study compares the combinations of content and process concepts identified as important in Germany with those considered relevant in the US context.

First, the combinations of content and process concepts identified in the German context can be generalized to the US context. Second, it is possible to identify combinations of content and process concepts in the US context that are also important in the German context. Third, content and process concepts identified in the two contexts can be integrated to generate a broader perspective that is valid for both contexts.

The results can be used for consolidating available curricular drafts for computer science as a teaching subject at school of the type available in many. The present findings are of great relevance for research-based approaches to the pre- and in-service education of computer science teachers. The methodological approach taken is important in efforts to consolidate curricular models of computer science education, as have been initiated by the Bologna process in Europe and by the organizations Association for Computing Machinery, Association for Information Systems, and Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers-Computer Society in the USA.

Results show that competence areas of central concepts identified in the two contexts can be integrated to generate a broader perspective that is valid for both contexts.

After more than four decades of its beginnings, Computer Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) has already reached a level of maturity in both the education and the profession. There is an ever-growing amount of literature on the subject; however, relatively few studies have taken a systematic approach to analyze CAAD education. Moreover, design institutions often view CAAD merely as a technical issue ignoring socio-cultural and theoretical aspects. In order to alleviate these problems, this paper presents a structured analysis of CAAD education based on Prof. Necdet Teymur's theory of architectural education. Prof. Teymur claims that the components of architectural education should be studied in terms of objectives (why), contents (what), methodology (how) and management (who) along with four different knowledge and disciplinary levels (viewpoints); namely, sociological, ideological, epistemological, and pedagogical. In this paper, current issues of CAAD education are addressed within this framework and several proposals are presented.