New technologies are used in many courses and for many occasions. Good teachers try to use the best tool and the best method to introduce or to treat difficult subjects by presenting the information in different ways: spoken words, written text, pictures, graphs, movies or by using interactive computer tools. It is a fact that students who…

Educators have focused their literacy education efforts on teaching children to code and decode words. In spite of all the efforts to teach literacy, the various report cards indicate that, perhaps, a new way of doing teaching literacy should be investigated. Today's media-centric youths could benefit from using mediated programs to help motivate…

As computer interfaces emerge as an instructional medium, instructors transitioning from the classroom continue to bear the burden of designing effective instruction. The medium of the computer interface, and the kinds of learning and interactive possibilities it affords, presumably changes the delivery of learner-centered instruction.…

Several empirical studies are discussed which indicate that adapting the level of support, the difficulty of the learning task, or support as well as difficulty has beneficial effects on learning and transfer test performance. Three conclusions can be drawn from the presented studies. First, both the level of available support and the difficulty…

This is a discussion about the role of a case or authentic scenario in an online learning environment. Using authentic cases for intentional learning promotes effective, cognitive, and affective transfer between learning space and performance space. Creating an online case event provides an opportunity for learning design professionals to use…

Current issues in educational communications and technology are addressed in this collection of 51 papers, which are mainly research reports. The first five papers were prepared for a symposium on the status of research in instructional technology, an introduction and four discussions of divergent points of view in the current controversy over the…