Some Effects of Promotion and Non-Promotion upon the Social and Personal Adjustment of Children

Past research on cognition has demonstrated that cognitive learning strategies used to complement instruction can have beneficial effects on memory and subsequent achievement. The utilization of microcomputer technology to deliver instructional content to students provides an optimum environment to examine the instructional effectiveness of embedded instructional strategies. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of an imagery cue and an attention directing strategy within a context of a microcomputer learning environment that provided both self-paced and externally paced instruction. Achievement was measured on five different tests designed to measure different educational objectives. One hundred eighty freshman students were randomly assigned to one of nine treatment groups. The results of the study indicate that embedding an imagery cue and an attention directing strategy in an instructional sequence increases student achievement. A combination of the two embedded strategies was also effective in improving students’ achievement; however, the combining of the two strategies did not have a cumulative effect. It was also determined that the effectiveness of the embedded strategies was dependent on whether the instruction was self-paced or externally paced.     

Portraits of Life in Schools

THE RIGHT PRESCRIPTION FOR LEFTIST INDOCTRINATION: A DOSE OF THE FOUNDERS A thesis concocted by right-wing ideological watchdogs and advanced with elevated urgency in the wake September 11, 2001, claims that America's college and university students are hostage to a leftist, “moral-relativist” and multiculturalist professoriat.     

The Use of Video for Training Engineers in the Presentation of Technical Information

The effective communication of complex information is a key task for professional people in general and for engineers in particular. The education of engineers often, therefore, contains studies designed to show the context in which physical systems will be used and to offer students the opportunity to explain their ideas in writing and speech. This paper describes an activity of skills training for engineering students in which a simple video system gives a sense of occasion to spoken presentations; offers the possibility of instant feedback about performance; and proves useful in increasing students' confidence in their powers of communication. Notes are included on some additional uses of video in the education of engineers.