This study assessed the depth of online learning, with a focus on the nature of online interaction in four distance education course designs. The Study Process Questionnaire was used to measure the shift in students' approach to learning from the beginning to the end of the courses. Design had a significant impact on the nature of the interaction…

The author explored the potential to promote students' understanding of difficult science concepts through an examination of the inter-relationships among the teachers' instructional approach, students' learning preference styles, and their levels of learning process. The concept "air pressure," which requires an understanding of…

This paper reports upon a two-year, qualitative, case study action research investigation into "learning within a project team". This project team undertook a significant socio-technical redesign project within a major Australian heavy engineering/manufacturing operation. The paper identifies and elaborates upon a number of elements that…

This paper discusses research designed to determine the learning style preferences of students in a graduate class. The theoretical backdrop for the study was that learning styles impact on both the academic achievement of students and the teaching effectiveness of the instructor. Fifteen students, ranging in age from 23 to over 37, in a research…

Serving as a bridge between research in the cognitive sciences and educational policymakers and practitioners, the first part of this report reviews recent research on thinking and learning. Findings emphasize work on higher order learning, the role of knowledge in learning, and the development of a disposition for thinking. Topics detailed…

The Inventory of Learning Processes (ILP) was developed by Schmeck, Ribich, and Ramanaiah in 1977 as a self-report inventory to assess learning style through a behavioral-oriented approach. The ILP was revised by Schmeck in 1983. The Revised ILP contains six scales: (1) Deep Processing; (2) Elaborative Processing; (3) Shallow Processing; (4)…

Evidence from video tapes of experts thinking aloud and using analogies in scientific problem solving is presented. Four processes appear to be important in using an analogy: (1) generating the analogy; (2) establishing confidence in the validity of the analogy relation; (3) understanding the analogous case; and (4) applying findings to the…

This paper first presents an overview of studies which categorized types of learning styles, teaching models, and critical thinking modes. In models of teaching, four families of human orientation to learning are identified: information processing, personal, social, and behavioral systems. Learning styles are identified as: concrete/sequential;…

One of the important cognitive strategies individuals use when learning is to organize many bits of information into integrated patterns called chunks. To investigate the process of chunking spatial information, 32 college students integrated two cognitive maps either before or after an interfering task. The combined spatial layout formed either a…

The class of media characteristics, which is generic to them and which may be of potentially great relevance to learning, is the way in which media select, highlight, structure, and present information, i.e., their "languages" or symbol systems. How, if at all, and why do symbol systems, in general, differentially relate to cognition and learning?…

The results of this study support earlier contentions that standardized intellectual ability and school achievement tests are quite heterogeneous with respect to cognitive style requirements. The findings indicate, however, that additional variance was accounted for by cognitive style measures beyond that of verbal and nonverbal IQ relation to…

A study investigated the effects of text condensation, field independence, and sex on students' comprehension of and attitudes toward instructional prose materials. Fifty-eight high school juniors and seniors were divided into three groups on the basis of sex and their scores on a field independence measure. Students in the original treatment were…

It sometimes happens that one is unable to recall a word or name that he feels he knows very well. This state of frustrated recall is referred to as a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experience. Two experiments were devised to compare the ability of a weak trace and a decoding-failure model to predict the conditions under which TOT reports would be most…

The exploratory study focused on the existence, variability, and effectiveness of adult learning styles among participants receiving computer-based instruction in the metric system. A pretest was administered to 75 adults not currently involved in formal educational programs, and 40 participants were selected whose pretest indicated no knowledge…

Defines skill, performance, and competency, relates the concept of competency based education to the intent of the Hart Bill, the Stull Bill or AB 65, i.e., to insure that students master and perform basic skills of communication and computation, and considers some underlying assumptions that are the basis of educational legislation. (Author/RK)