Learning from programmed instruction: Examining implications for modern instructional technology

This article reports a theoretical examination of several parallels between contemporary instructional technology (as manifest in one of its most current manifestations, online learning) and one of its direct predecessors, programmed instruction. We place particular focus on the unterlying assumptions of the two movements. Our analysis suggests that four assumptions that contributed to the historical demise of programmed instruction—(a) ontological determinisms, (b) materialism (c) social efficiency, and (d) technological determinism—also underlie contemporary instructional technology theory and practice and threaten its long-term viability as an educational resource. Based on this examination, we offer several recommendations for practicing instructional technologists and make a call for innovative assumptions and make a call for innovative assumptions and theories not widely visible in the field of instructional technology.     

Computer Experience,School Support and Computer Anxieties

Past research has shown computer anxiety to be present in a sizeable minority of school teachers, and has identified some of the personal and school‐based correlates of this anxiety. Before effective interventions can be introduced, however, more needs to be known of the various forms and sources of this problem. The current study involved a survey of the experiences, attitudes and anxieties of a random sample of 350 Australian primary and secondary school teachers. Levels of self‐rated computing competence among these teachers were moderately low. Computing competence and anxiety were highly correlated, r= ‐ 0.78. Three distinctive types of computer anxiety were identified, as was a set of factors predictive of each. As hypothesised, computer anxieties were inversely related to the quality of prior computer learning experiences, and to the extent of current school support for computer usage. Implications for the reduction of computer anxiety among teachers are discussed.     

Children’s learning of all the news that’s fit to picture

It has been shown that pictures greatly facilitate children’s recall of story information, But will they have the same positive effect when the passages to be recalled are more directly educational? In these experiments, both single pictures illustrating the passage’s main idea and a group of pictures, one illustrating each sentence, helped fourth graders recall the illustrated content of newspaper articles.     

Degree of mnemonic support and students’ acquisition of science facts

Eighth-grade students silently read passages that described dichotomized attributes of nine North American minerals. One-fourth of the students were given instruction in the use of mnemonic techniques, and were provided with “keywords” and mnemonic illustrations of the passage content; one-fourth were provided with keywords and given instructions for creating internal mnemonic images of the passage content; one-fourth were given instructions for creating their own keywords and internal mnemonic images; and the remaining fourth were given motivational instructions and told to use their “own best method” of studying while reading the passages. Mnemonic instruction, when accompanied by experimenter-provided keywords and mnemonic illustrations, produced superior recall of the mineral attributes in comparison to the other three conditions on both immediate and eight-day delayed performance tests. Implications of the findings are discussed with regard to the amount of external support necessary for effective use of mnemonic techniques by students reading expository prose passages.     

Working as Partners: School teachers' experiences as university-based teacher educators

A qualitative study was undertaken of 25 teachers who have taken time away from schools or early childhood centres to work on short-term contracts in a university college of education preservice teacher education programme. The study considers their perceptions of the experience and how this might impact on the partnerships between colleges and schools or early childhood centres. Findings suggest that there are benefits and difficulties associated with short-term contracts. However, overall participants found that teaching in a preservice teacher education programme was a very valuable professional experience and that it enhanced their ability to support student teachers more effectively.     

Feedback,feedforward: evaluating the effectiveness of an oral peer review exercise amongst postgraduate students

Assessment for learning approaches, such as peer review exercises may improve student performance in summative assessments and increase their satisfaction with assessment practices. We conducted a mixed methods study to evaluate the effectiveness of an oral peer review exercise among post-graduate students. We examined: (1) final assessment grades among students who did and did not take part in the peer review exercise; (2) student perceptions of the impact of the peer review exercise; and (3) student understanding of, and satisfaction with, this new assessment practice. We found that students who took part in the exercise had a significantly higher mean grade in a subsequent summative oral presentation assessment than students who did not take part in the exercise. Students gained a better understanding of assessment and marking criteria and expressed increased confidence and decreased anxiety about completing the subsequent summative assessment. Assessment for learning improves academic attainment and the learning experience in postgraduate students.     

Pictorial Illustrations Still Improve Students' Learning from Text

Research conducted primarily during the 1970s and 1980s supported the assertion that carefully constructed text illustrations generally enhance learners' performance on a variety of text-dependent cognitive outcomes. Research conducted throughout the 1990s still strongly supports that assertion. The more recent research has extended pictures-in-text conclusions to alternative media and technological formats and has begun to explore more systematically the whys, whens, and for whoms of picture facilitation, in addition to the whethers and how muchs. Consideration is given here to both more and less conventional types of textbook illustration, with several tenets for teachers provided in relation to each type.     

Nonverbal and Verbal Performance on a Number Conservation Problem and a Proposal about the Determinants of Nonconservation

This study compared the ease of verbal and nonverbal versions of a number conservation problem for 4and S‐year‐old children. The nonverbal task employed a ‘train‐transfer’ procedure in which children were first trained to a criterial level to make one response to stimulus pairs that contained two rows of the same number in one‐to‐one correspondence and a different response to stimulus pairs in which one of the rows was of greater or of lesser number than the other. Conservation performance was maintaining the learned response to the identical pair after one of its rows had been deformed. Taking both ages together the nonverbal task was the easier. However, children's justifications showed that verbal processes may have been responsible for both correct and incorrect performance in many cases. The data are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that children interpret conservation terms perceptually when used by others in certain contexts in spite of what they know about the underlying fact of conservation.     

Problem-Centered Supplemental Instruction in Biology: Influence on Content Recall,Content Understanding,and Problem Solving Ability

To address the need for effective, efficient ways to apply active learning in undergraduate biology courses, in this paper, we propose a problem-centered approach that utilizes supplemental web-based instructional materials based on principles of active learning. We compared two supplementary web-based modules using active learning strategies: the first used Merrill’s First Principles of Instruction as a framework for organizing multiple active learning strategies; the second used a traditional web-based approach. Results indicated that (a) the First Principles group gained significantly from pretest to posttest at the Remember level (t(40) = ?1.432, p = 0.08, ES = 0.4) and at the Problem Solving level (U = 142.5, N1 = 21, N2 = 21, p = .02, ES = 0.7) and (b) the Traditional group gained significantly from pretest to posttest at the Remember level (t(36) = 1.762, p = 0.043, ES = 0.6). Those in the First Principles group were significantly more likely than the traditional group to be confident in their ability to solve problems in the future (χ² (2, N = 40) = 3.585, p = 0.09).     

The construction and use of a metaphor for science teaching

While constructivism has emerged as a major reform in science education from the last decade, wide-spread adoption of constructivist practices in school laboratories and classrooms is yet to be achieved. If constructivist approaches are to be utilised more widely, teachers will need to accept a more active and constructivist role in their own pedagogical learning. One experienced junior science teacher was able to implement constructivist approaches in her classroom by using a personally constructed metaphor to guide her practice. Specializations: science education, teaching of thinking, professional development. Specializations: constructivism, professional development.