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Cooperative learning is a common teaching application in curriculum planning and learning in many departments in recent years. With students from different backgrounds at the department of design and questionnaire surveys, three dimensions of “Learning Motivation and Attitude”, “Cooperative Skills and Peer Interaction” and “Teacher-Student Relationship” were investigated. The results of the t-test showed that genders affected significantly the teacher-student relationship. In an educational system, there were significant differences in the three dimensions between the students in full-time and the night school. Grade analysis and verification results from ANOVA showed the full-time juniors had the most active participation in the cooperative learning model, followed by the full-time seniors and night school seniors. The research results also revealed that the students at lower grades had low participation in cooperative learning. The results provide a reference for academic research in design education and teaching models.

The global information glut, and rapid developments in electronic media and the World Wide Web (Web) within the last couple of decades, have brought about numerous changes to every society and economy. Recognizing this, the Singapore government envisaged a dire need for Singapore to be Information Technology (IT) equipped and skilled in every industry, beginning most importantly with education in schools. Specifically, the Ministry of Education (MOE) implemented rigorous plans for both schoolteachers and students to be outfitted with the necessary competencies. As a result, there ensued several educational reforms in schools. This paper gives an insight into the changes that have been taking place in the education system in Singapore with regard to the new policies on IT; an overview of the consequent challenges that teachers face and the changing roles that they have to assume; and finally a brief discussion on how these changes can be adopted more readily.

We have developed a one-day practical session to present microbiology and biotechnology to science secondary school students. For the last three years, this session has been attended by over 100 students each year, who were selected from High Secondary Schools from all over Catalonia. The feedback that we have received from the students has been extremely positive. Almost all of them described the session as a helpful experience for their preparation and the vast majority appreciated the opportunity to perform practical work in a microbiology laboratory.

This paper summarizes the methodology and conclusions used on a master thesis that had the research aim of exploring how Web 2.0 and social networks are having an effect on users' information behavior. The method used for the collection of data was a semi structured interview, containing questions constructed according to the issues of Web 2.0 and social networks identified on the literature, along with typical features or characteristics of social networks. Purposive sampling was used to select the interview participants. The method for analyzing data was discourse analysis and a framework of categories was created to present the data in a certain order. This study identified various trends and tendencies in users' information behavior and some future directions for research were proposed. Findings of this type of study provide insights to users' information behavior in information systems, they could contribute to a better understanding of the users and to the design of such systems; this is relevant when it is necessary to build information systems from the point of view of users needs and behaviors, that is, by taking a bottom-up approach.