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In the globalized e-learning environment, students coming from different cultures and countries have different characteristics and require different support designed for their approaches to study and learning styles. This paper explores the ways in which cultural background influences students' approaches to study and learning styles. Participants in the study consisted of 131 eastern students and 54 western students from an Australian university. The students were tested using the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) for assessing their approaches to study and the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire (ILS) for assessing their learning styles. The results of the study led to a set of principles being proposed to guide personalization of e-learning system design on the basis of cultural differences.

Dr Boondao is a lecturer at Faculty of Management Science, Ubonrachathani University in Thailand. Her primary research interest is personalization in e-learning, specifically cultural influences on human learning. She is currently doing a post doctoral research in cultural influences on students' approaches to learning and learning styles at Monash University.

In computer programming education it is widely acknowledged that students learn not only through theory but largely by practicing. It is however also widely reported that many students have large problems in their learning, despite great efforts during many decades to improve programming education.

The research presented in this paper highlights and problematize the interaction between theory and practice in novice programming education. To this end the present research uses the WTP concept, Ways of Thinking and Practicing. "Thinking" is discussed in terms of students' learning of concepts, while "Practice" is discussed as common novice programming activities.

Based on two empirical studies it is argued that students often experience the practice as difficult to learn as the theory, and that there exists a mutual and complex dependency between theory and practice in the learning process. One can not be learned without the other, and any of them can become an obstacle that hinders further learning. Evidence points to the need to simultaneously research theory and practice and the relation between the two in the learning process.

The present research proposes a way to research the role of practice in relation to students' learning of concepts. Results from a phenomenographic analysis on novice programming students' understanding of some central concepts in object-oriented programming are related to common novice programming activities. It is shown that programming activities at different levels of proficiency corresponds to understanding of concepts at qualitatively different levels. Activities at a certain level of proficiency can hardly be meaningfully carried out without a certain level of conceptual understanding. And vice versa; certain aspects of the concepts are difficult for students to discern if a corresponding level of practical proficiency is not reached.

The results of the present research can to some extent explain why activities, performed e.g. in the lab, do not necessarily lead to deepened conceptual understanding, and why conceptual understanding do not necessarily lead to a higher level of skillfulness in programming education. Moreover, our findings give implications for how to design introductory computer programming courses so that learning of concepts and learning of practice could mutually support each other, with a potential to lead to a better learning outcome.

Anna Eckerdal has a Master of Science Education from Uppsala University. She currently holds a position as a lecturer at Uppsala University, and will finish her PhD in Computer Science Education in December this year. Eckerdal's research interest is on novice students' learning of object-oriented programming. Her main research approach has been phenomenography. Beside this, she has investigated Threshold Concepts in computer science with an international research group from Sweden, Wales, and the United States.

Etymology: Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek, from anarchos having no ruler, from an- + archos ruler

The role of the internet in learning has expanded at a level that is unprecedented in the history of learning spaces. Gutenberg's printing press may have had a vast impact upon medieval learning, but its influence was slow and steady. The internet has transformed learning spaces in about a decade. Following McLuhan, the medium has become the message. The argument to be put here is that a major issue facing education is the anarchy engendered by the internet where there is an absence of authority, or established order, except for what is seen as the authority of the web itself. Following a similar psychology as Milgram's university students accepting the white-coat authority, many normal people will champion the published word on the net as authority.

The importance of learning anarchy in defining and understanding plagiarism will be explored as will be its relationship to the popularist genX/Y definitions.

Selby is the CERG Research Fellow, and has been since 1999. He is a psychologist with wide teaching and consulting experience both in Australia and in the UK and S.E. Asia. His involvement in education has ranged from teaching in TAFE, through lecturing in various university faculties, to workshops on everything from career development to research methods.

Selby's array of interests include photography, restoring cameras and Chinese brush painting. He is also Webmaster and general factotum for the Akademos Tertiary Education Cooperative (http://www.akademos.org.au).

The intense interest in the use of information technology to support teaching-related activities has recently spawned the development of "ePortfolio" systems, which have as a key goal the documentation of key skills, interests and achievements of students in their learning endeavours.

EPortfolios allow students to build a compendium of "assets", which describe learning activities and outcomes, and document the student's progress in his or her educational environment. Of course, such a list of assets can be put to other uses, and the flexibility of the system is a key parameter in determining how such systems might be used.

In this talk, I shall demonstrate some experience gained in using "PebblePad", a UK-based ePortfolio system.

John Hurst joined Monash in 1987 and has been an Associate Professor since 1994. His research interests include programming languages and software engineering, particularly in the areas of persistence, compiler construction, literate programming, document technologies, and, most recently, computing education.

He is co-leader of a research group called the Computing Education Research Group (CERG), which has undertaken several significant research projects. The most significant of these was an investigation into best practice and innovation in IT and CT, funded by the Australian Universities Teaching Commission for $300,000 over two years. Currently he leads the PIAVEE project which is investigating "pedagogically agnostic" e-learning systems.

He holds BSc and BE degrees from The University of Adelaide, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of New South Wales. He also completed a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education at Monash, during his term as Associate Dean (Teaching). More recently, he served a term as President of the Academic Board.