Submissions will then undergo Open Peer Review.
Submissions should have a clear educational focus or application, and should illuminate the special contribution that interactive media can make to learners' knowledge, understanding or skill.
Submissions are expected to advance knowledge in the field in some way, by developing theory, or critiquing existing work, or providing an analysis or framework for understanding empirical findings.
Different kinds of submissions will be judged by different criteria. Ideally, we are looking for integrated submissions that present the theoretical basis for a technology, its design process and implementation, its evaluation, and theoretical implications. However, one or more these aspects may form the basis for a submission.
- Empirical Articles: describe the collection and interpretation of data concerning the design or use of an educational technology artifact. Data might include interviews, observations, surveys or experimental manipulations. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collection are welcome. Quantitative analyses should include appropriate statistical tests. Authors should clarify and critique the theoretical basis for the technology being evaluated. Review criteria include the appropriateness and rationale for the methods of data collection and analysis, and the significance of the conclusions for practice or research in educational technologies.
- Experience Articles: describe the application of principled methods, theory, or tools to the design, development, and/or deployment of an educational technology artifact. Review criteria include the value of the reflections abstracted from the experience and their relevance to other designers, educators, or researchers working in the field.
- Systems Articles: describe the software and technology associated with a novel application, design, or development tool. Review criteria include the originality, preciseness of description and relevance to other educational technology designers or educators. Authors should be clear as to what extent the system has been implemented and evaluated, and should make explicit the theoretical basis for the technology if this is not the focus of the submission.
- Literature Reviews and Theoretical Analyses: characterise the literature relating to a particular issue; identify key theoretical issues that need to be resolved; propose ways forward. Review criteria include the conceptual framework (if any) used to characterise and structure the literature review, justification of the importance of a theoretical issue, and potential of the theoretical approach proposed.
A submission typically has two components:
- Firstly, an article which can be printed as a conventional document
- Secondly, an interactive component, or supplementary materials of some other form.
1. An argument: presented as a hierarchical document or a hypertext
If you plan to produce a conventional document, please use the JIME Word Template to produce a Word document, from which we will generate HTML for processing in our D3E toolkit. However, we wish to encourage authors to exploit hypermedia and demonstration technologies to their fullest -- the linear article is not the only possible structure for communicating ideas. Consider replacing, or complementing, it with an alternative presentation of your material, e.g. a hypertext tour with interactive demonstrations. See for instance a selection of research hypertexts and two recent research hypertexts at Hypertext 2004.
2. Interactive demonstrations/datasets
As illustrated by published articles, JIME authors can bring alive their submissions through the provision of examples which more compellingly convey human-human or human-computer interaction, e.g.
- If the description of new interactive media forms a substantive part of the submission, the article must be integrated with illustrative extracts of the media which convey to readers its interactivity.
- Theoretical articles or literature reviews can now illustrate their analyses with particular examples of interactive media (which should become increasingly available over the Net).
- Authors can provide readers with better access to qualitative data, such as dialogue exchanges between students, extracts of video observation data, etc. With careful indexing and linkage to the article, this will provide the opportunity for greater rigour in the presentation of results.
The format which demonstrations of your system takes will depend on the maturity of your system, what production facilities you have, and the purpose of the demonstration in the context of the article. Some possibilities using current technologies are:
For archival purposes, we prefer to store local copies of interactive/supplementary material on the journal's server, but if this is not possible, then links to your own server are acceptable.- a demonstration version or even the full system, which readers can download and run on their own machines;
- a website used in your study
- screen recordings of the system in use, with audio commentary
Demonstrations must:
- run without difficulty on MacOS X, or Windows 2000 or later;
- be tightly integrated with the main article (either embedded in the web document, or with clear links between the document and the relevant parts of the demonstration);
- provide a quit option at all stages of the material and do not install any software without warning on user's machines.
The simplest way to submit is by email attachment. If too large, then please put on an FTP server or send a CD or DVD. We can also grant you FTP access to a server here if required.
Submissions by email to: jime@open.ac.uk