One‐teacher schools in America

Abstract

At the turn of the century some 200,000 one‐teacher schools were in existence in the United States. This number now stands at approximately 380. A study of these schools found them to be staffed with qualified teachers with extensive experience. The teachers are typically female and live near where they teach.

Teachers work an average of nine hours a day teaching all subjects including physical education and music. Other activities include custodial duties, driving the school bus, performing secretarial functions, ordering supplies, and lunch supervision.

Student enrollment has a present average level of 9.4, a level that helps teachers meet the needs of each student. Low enrollment may also create concern about school closures in the future. Teachers indicate that they use individualized instruction, peer tutoring, and cooperative learning. They have few discipline problems and no violence or drug issues.     

Integration of ICT within a project-based learning environment

An enormous challenge is presented to engineering educators by the rapidly changing world of information and communication technologies (ICT). It is essential that students acquire high-quality ICT experience before emerging into the real world of employment. The overall impact of ICT on teaching and learning at the current time, however, is largely through the conversion of conventional lecture notes to static documents, which are made available to students on the web. Project-based learning, by comparison, can provide students with the opportunity to work with emerging technologies and also gain important industrial experience. The first part of this paper presents a summary of the challenges that ICT presents third-level institutions through an examination of the pedagogical issues (and solutions) that arise from a move from traditional lectures to projectbased teaching. This introductory material is followed by the main bulk of the paper, i.e. two case studies. The first is an account of a short project, which involved the evaluation of commercially available undergraduate teaching material provided on CD-ROM. The second case study describes a more substantial project that began life at undergraduate level in collaboration with an indigenous Irish company involved in software development. This project involved the design and development of an online retailing prototype, which was subsequently developed further and launched as a commercial venture.