Animated pedagogical agents (APAs) have the potential to provide one-on-one, just-in-time instruction, guidance or mentoring in classrooms where such individualized human interactions may be infeasible. Much current APA research focuses on a wide range of design variables tested with small samples or in laboratory settings, while overlooking…

Explores issues surrounding efforts to introduce online catalogs to users and presents relevant research results from Northwestern University's "Educating the Online Catalog User" project. Highlights include attitudes and preconceptions about online catalogs and instruction, research on online catalog use, suggestions for online catalog teaching,…

College faculty who learned to do online bibliographic searching were surveyed immediately following and one year after training workshops. Information was gathered about user characteristics, their motivation for learning to search, and type of training needed, and conclusions were drawn about need for academic libraries to provide end user…

The recommendations in this paper are based on the findings of a survey of 32 institutions that had subscribed--for a fee--to receive live via satellite one or more of five staff development teleconferences for school teachers and administrators. The teleconferences, which were one-way video/two-way audio productions, were broadcast during 1985-86…

Describes program of end user training designed to teach students rudiments of searching using Bibliographic Retrieval Service/After Dark. Results of participant responses to post-search questionnaire are reported, including suggestions of what to cover in basic training, problems of end users, and developing role of online searcher as consultant.…

Many theories have been proposed to help instructional designers make instructional-strategy decisions, yet it is not clear if these theories are actually used by ID practitioners. This study used a web-survey to examine the design strategies of 113 ID practitioners. The survey asked respondents to rate how frequently they used learning or ID…

This report is intended to provide instructors and designers concerned with training for the National Guard and Army Reserve (the Reserve Component--RC) with a practical review of research findings on the successful implementation of computer-mediated communication (CMC) for distance education and a reference guide to international resources and…