Many medical schools offer pre-professional programs to undergraduate students. The main purpose of the university pre-professional program (UPPP) is to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills required to successfully cope with the academic demands of further education provided by professional colleges. The aim of this commentary…

The lecture is often posited as the prototypical "face-to-face" educational encounter, seen as embodying key features of the pre-networked academy. These are implicitly characterised as forms of boundedness or impermeability, in terms of both the physical and temporal context, and the ontological status of the participants and the nature of the…

In this article, the author shares his experience joining a faculty learning community (FLC) focused on integrating technology with teaching. The author expresses that leveraging the FLC helps him do things he didn't know how to do with technology, including podcasting his lectures. It shows him how to implement projects involving technology in…

The use of computer graphics as visual aids to lecture-style university instruction is discussed briefly. It is contended that the following three factors inhibit the application of computers as visual aids: (1) the costs of providing sufficient numbers of monitors and large enough monitors to allow appropriate visual access by students are…

The emerging technologies potential has not altered teaching methods in higher education because of such factors as prohibitive cost and faculty resistance to change, but these are symptomatic of more pervasive organizational attributes and educational system dynamics, including student influences, faculty incentive structure, lack of leadership,…

Describes a model which recognizes active and passive roles of teachers and learners as a means of identifying five basic methods of teaching. (CHC)

Distance Educational Practice is today supported by a range of information systems (IS) design theories. Still, there are surprisingly few strong pedagogical ideas and constructs that are communicated across distance educational institutions. Instead it is often the technology, the software and the medium that is at the centre of attention as we…

Demonstrates how conditions for active learning can be enhanced by using newer and more sophisticated educational technology. Describes a case study involving a large lecture class on world mythology. Also addresses the question of how information technology can be employed to improve student learning. (Author/VWL)

Discusses the changes in the instructional activities of university faculty members as a result of new computer-related educational technologies. Topics discussed include computer-assisted instruction; computer-managed instruction; optical discs; microcomputers; lecturing versus computer-based tutorials; videodiscs; computerized evaluative…

The education system is a failure and must be reexamined. Student teacher relationships and teaching methods must change. In the future, instead of learning by rote, students will have recourse to data banks to obtain the materials to be used as content for the exercise of what Piaget calls operativity. (RM)

In its use of complex, real-world problems to introduce concepts and motivate learning in an active and cooperative learning environment, problem-based learning is a powerful alternative to the passive lecture in introductory college science. Use of technology and multimedia instruction, focus on large classes, and use of interdisciplinary…