Ready to learn? Children's pre-academic achievement in pre-Kindergarten programs

We examined children's growth in school-related learning and social skills over the pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) year in state-funded programs designed to prepare children for kindergarten. We expected that children's gains in academic and social skills could be attributed to variations in the structural and classroom process dimensions of program quality. Nearly 3000 (n = 2800) children were randomly selected, four per classroom, from approximately 700 randomly selected, state-funded pre-Kindergarten classrooms in eleven states. Enrollment in pre-K appeared related to gains in academic skills. Children showed larger gains in academic outcomes when they experienced higher-quality instruction or closer teacher–child relationships. Gains were not related to characteristics of the child or program (i.e., ratio, teacher qualifications and program location and length). These findings have implications for a range of state and local policy and program development efforts as well as for theories of contextual influences on development.     

Operation ARA: A computerized learning game that teaches critical thinking and scientific reasoning

Operation ARA (Acquiring Research Acumen) is a computerized learning game that teaches critical thinking and scientific reasoning. It is a valuable learning tool that utilizes principles from the science of learning and serious computer games. Students learn the skills of scientific reasoning by engaging in interactive dialogs with avatars. They are tutored by avatars with tutoring sessions that vary depending on how well students have responded to questions about the material they are learning. Students also play a jeopardy-like game against a feisty avatar to identify flaws in research and then generate their own questions to determine the quality of different types of research. The research examples are taken from psychology, biology, and chemistry to help students transfer the thinking skills across domains of knowledge. Early results show encouraging learning gains.     

Toward Effective and Compelling Instruction for High School eCommerce Students: Results from a Small Field Study

This paper describes an instructional development effort to create effective and compelling instruction for eCommerce students. Results from a small field study inform the development project. Four high school students in an eCommerce course completed the standalone tutorial developed to teach them how to create a web page in the HyperText Markup Language (HTML). The four participants were also interviewed in an attempt to determine what motivates them to learn. Researcher observations of completed web pages indicated that the tutorial helped the four participants learn introductory HTML tags and, except for one revealing instance, they mastered the content without instructor assistance. Future work to develop an automated system for determining and correcting learner misconceptions evident in dysfunctional hyperlinks would provide additional support to learners. Lastly, this paper discusses implications of the field study results for the design and implementation of effective and compelling instruction.     

一个关于工作场所学习的建议性概念框架:对人力资源开发理论建设与研究的启示

人力资源开发领域的学者和实践者都非常关注工作场所学习。关于正式培训和非正式学习,一直以来形成了大量的研究和讨论。本文从人力资源开发角度,结合已有的大量文献,提出了一个工作场所学习的概念性框架,框架包括三个互相作用的变量:学习的场所、在发展和传授学习经验时所制定的计划的程度和学习过程中培训者、推动者和其他人的角色。本文还讨论了这一框架对人力资源开发领域中理论建设和研究的启示。     

Measuring The Business Impact of E‐Learning: An Empirical Study

This study fills a gap in the current HRD literature of return on investment (ROI) analysis of technology‐based learning interventions. Using a Type IV control group method as defined by Wang (2002), the study empirically analyzed and measured the learning effectiveness and the business impact of an e‐learning system implemented in General Electric Company. The e‐learning system under study demonstrated significant economic returns in regard to reduced learning response time and reduced project cycle time. The study shows that e‐learning, as a means of technology‐based HRD intervention, can be highly effective as a performance support learning mechanism, although the results also suggest that e‐learning alone is not sufficient to replace the traditional face‐to‐face learning platforms.