Describes the development of a method for the evaluation and comparison of interactive information retrieval systems, which are based on the concept of a simulated work-task situation and the involvement of real end users. Highlights include real and simulated information needs; relevance assessments; and the dynamic nature of information needs.…

Reports the results of a comparative study of the 26 open universities in Asia (of 12 Asian countries/regions) conducted by the Center for Research in Distance and Adult Learning, Open University of Hong Kong. Topics explored were: gender/age distribution of the students; leadership styles; teaching and delivery model; methods and forms of student…

Discusses supervisory skills that factory personnel believe are important for leading and improving employee performance in complex manufacturing environments. Highlights include a historical perspective; manufacturing technologies; results of Pareto analysis, comparative analysis, and analysis of variance; and a Taxonomy of Supervisory Skills.…

During three discussion sessions, two groups of five teachers each developed a shared lesson plan, one for each group, for the teaching of a difficult economic concept. Differences in learning outcomes are interpreted in light of observed differences in how the concept was dealt with in the different classrooms. (Author/AEF)

Compares two introductory statistics courses at Bar-Ilan University (Israel), one offered as an Internet-based course and one as a traditional lecture-based course. Highlights include expectations of students; student satisfaction at the end of the course; students' self-confidence in the Internet course; and cost effectiveness. (Author/LRW)

Two time-delay conditions for teaching complex visual discriminations to 14 normal preschoolers, 12 with mild mental retardation, and 11 with moderate mental retardation were compared. Results indicated that for all populations and stimuli, time delay of multiple dynamic distinctive-feature prompts produced learning, while time delay of the single…

This study compared effectiveness of cognitive modeling with and without verbalization in teaching 60 learning-disabled elementary students efficient questioning strategies. Results indicated that both groups showed significant reductions from pretreatment to posttreatment in the number of questions required but no effectiveness differential…

The use of cooperative education as a technique for increasing both test performance and interest in a course of introductory statistics was studied. The hypothesis was that students in voluntary groups would perform better than students in assigned groups and that group learning would be more effective than individual learning. (MLW)

Describes a process model that can be used for performance technology and discusses differences between it and an instructional technology process model. Five basic steps are examined: needs assessment/analysis; design; development; implementation; and evaluation. An instructional technology/performance technology process comparison matrix is also…

This article pursues two ends: to describe, evaluate, and compare various methodologies and strategies available for evaluating learning technologies, and to illustrate several key strategies. Evaluation methods include surveys, interviews, observations, activity measures, and combinations of these. Examples include Educom Survey, Carnegie Mellon…

Discussion of online public access catalogs focuses on a study that evaluated 3 different systems in Great Britain. Comparative evaluations were made using structured exercises to determine searching techniques and transaction logs to investigate user behavior. Comments on future research are also given. (12 references) (LRW)

Presents three assignment sequences--covering both canonical and noncanonical stories, mini-anthologies, and novels--that encourage secondary school students to think critically about the concept of literature. Notes that students can learn to analyze literature critically by comparing both canonical and noncanonical texts. (MM)

Reports on children's literature and its role in teacher education in Canada. Uses data from a 1987-88 national survey of teachers of children's literature in Canadian colleges and universities. Compares children's literature courses taught in teacher training programs. (NH)

Examines the differences between explicit and implicit methods of teaching grammar in a university's advanced French conversation classes. Students taught explicitly performed better overall (in writing and orally) than students who were exposed to an implicit presentation of the same grammar content. (CB)

Tests the inferential approach to the study of competence evaluation and a series of complicating factors relevant to it by having participants with known implicit theories judge an observed communicator on a set of competence-relevant characteristics and on overall competence. Finds inferential models predicted these judgments well. (MS)