The commentary argues for an understanding of how texts are put together that accounts for multimodality and draws on children's ways of being and doing in the home, their "habitus". It focuses on identities as socially situated. It argues that it is important to trace the process of sedimenting identities during text production. This offers a way…

Presents a model for course development which utilizes a behavioral approach to instruction within the context of instructional systems design (ISD). An overview of the ISD process is given, and an introductory college psychology course is described which was prepared by modifying Keller's Personalized System of Instruction (PSI). (LRW)

Describes an investigation of the effects of mnemonic processing on interference phenomena. College students in two treatment groups and a control group read fictitious biographical passages. Although integrated imagery-mnemonic subjects recalled more factual information than separate mnemonic subjects, their recall was not statistically different…

Students at the University of Mississippi were surveyed to compare the usefulness of two types of workbooks in a library/freshman English bibliographic instruction program. The workbook used in the first year of the study required short answers to reference questions; the revised workbook, used the second year, required answers related to term…

Investigates effectiveness of advance organizers for teaching functioning and use of compilers to undergraduate students in computer science courses. Two experimental groups used the advance organizer while two control groups did not. Findings indicate that an explicitly concept-directed organizer is effective in providing a framework for…

A controlled experiment studying effects of adding voice-over sound to a silent electronic text service tested program acceptability and memory retention. Results indicate no significant differences in ratings for acceptability although the test for memory retention resulted in significantly higher scores for the sound group on recall and…

Two experiments investigated effects of pictures on kindergarten children learning to read nouns. Results indicate instructions to associate word and picture and viewing of the word prior to presentation of the picture failed to improve performance. Children who learned words in absence of pictures recognized more words on post-learning trials.…

Examines expert system shells and the role a microcomputer-based expert system can play as an intelligent job aid. Characteristics of traditional and automated job aids techniques are described, and the role of instructional designers in developing expert systems within organizations is discussed. (Author/LRW)

In a study of elementary children required to read factual or fictitious passages with or without relevant pictures, recall performance revealed a pictorial facilitation effect which differed according to passage type. Pictures with story passages enhanced recall of illustrated text while pictures with factual passages enhanced illustrated and…

Outlines research conducted at Brigham Young University to identify effective, efficient computer-based drill and practice instructional strategies for teaching paired associate or multiple discrimination tasks. A sophisticated computer-based drill and practice is contrasted with a simple flashcard strategy. Research supporting the sophisticated…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine an effective approach to developing university vocational lifelong learning (VLL) professionals as researchers. Design/methodology/approach: Two quite different approaches to developing VLL professionals as researchers were piloted, one involving face-to-face training and the other distance…

Describes study of 122 undergraduate and graduate students that contrasted the effects of two error correction procedures on student achievement when using computer assisted instruction. Analyses of variance were used to determine whether question type or error response affected subsequent responses to factual and higher cognitive questions.…

Describes a study that examined the relationship between academic ability or aptitude, as measured by grade point average and American College Test scores, and achievement with and without computer-assisted instruction. (15 references) (CLB)

Studies the effects of varying levels of interactivity on the learning rate of 98 high school students using four increasingly interactive versions of computer-based interactive video instruction. Students are grouped by ability levels and results are compared for recall rate, instructional time, and acquisition rate. Twenty-two references are…

Describes a study of 36 college juniors at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis to contrast how well students learn new concepts from working with a partner versus working individually on a computer-based lesson. Highlights include types of feedback chosen and an analysis of verbal interactions. (Author/LRW)