How Should Instructional Designers Be Educated?

Simon suggested that design, defined broadly, is concerned with any kind of deliberate problem solving, whether it be in fields traditionally associated with design, like architecture and engineering, or fields involving the design of instruction. Since instructional design is a kind ol'skillcd professional behavior, the education of other skilled professionals is examined and suggestions are made for analogous instructional techniques in any field. The question of how instructional designers should be educated is related to the larger question of how to teach people to design in general.     

Match-Fixing in Cornish Wrestling during the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Cornish wrestling, which was distinctive to Cornwall, was the county’s most popular sport, with a large number of wrestlers competing for lucrative prizes at numerous tournaments and watched by thousands of spectators. Its popularity also extended to London, where sporting entrepreneurs, mainly publicans, organized and promoted wrestling in the Cornish style, when the best wrestlers were lured to the capital to compete for large prizes, witnessed by substantial crowds, which often included members of the nobility. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Cornish wrestling suffered a serious decline in popularity with fewer wrestlers, tournaments, and spectators. By 1900 the sport had almost died out and only survived due to the efforts of a small group of talented wrestlers who inspired a minor revival in the years leading up to 1914. One factor that contributed to the decline was the practice of ‘faggoting’, which was a form of match-fixing that involved wrestlers agreeing with opponents to share any prize money. Consequently, the sport developed a bad reputation and became very unpopular with spectators. In order to eradicate the practice, wrestling organizers issued regular warnings to wrestlers or excluded them from tournaments.     

Self-report of ADHD symptoms in university students: cross-gender and cross-national prevalence

Little research has examined the structure and prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms in university students, including whether symptom structure conforms to the bidimensional (i.e., inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity) conceptualization of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSMV-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and whether self-reported symptoms vary across gender and country. A sample of 1,209 university students from three countries (Italy, New Zealand, and the United States) completed a 24-item self-report measure (the Young Adult Rating Scale) tapping ADHD symptomatology. Factor analyses within the U.S. and New Zealand samples supported a bidimensional symptom structure, whereas weaker support for this conceptualization was provided by the Italian sample. Participants did not vary significantly by gender in symptom report; however, Italian students reported significantly more inattention and hyperactivity-impulsivity symptoms than students from the United States, and students from New Zealand reported more inattention symptoms than students from the United States. The prevalence of self-reported ADHD symptoms beyond DSM-IV thresholds for diagnosis ranged from 0% (Italian women) to 8.1% (New Zealand men). The implications of these results for the use of DSM-IV criteria in identifying university students with ADHD are discussed.