The adjustment of medical school faculty members to a new curriculum, called problem-based learning, was studied. Nineteen faculty members who taught in both a lecture-based and tutorial program over 2 academic years were surveyed. Besides the teacher-centered approach, the other model of learning was student-centered and could be conducted in…

Challenges to the psychology teacher are considered, including engaging students in the learning process, helping students develop a historical perspective in their study of psychology, and dealing with controversial topics. Resistance to answering questions is likely to be greatest when the lecturer asks for highly specific facts. Students may be…

A study of effective English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teaching in large classes is presented. The small body of literature on class size and student achievement is reviewed, the "large section" approach is described. The approach is evaluated with data on student performance in an ESL program offered at Montgomery College, (Maryland).…

A pilot project examined the effectiveness of computer assisted instruction (CAI) in teaching selected concepts of health and fitness: coronary risk, lifestyle, and nutrition as related to weight control. A convenience sample of 58 students from two Concepts of Health and Fitness classes were randomly assigned to two groups, both of which used…

A review of the journal literature on three instructional strategies (lecture, the small group, and the discussion method) reveals that research concerning teacher training in these strategies is extremely limited. (Journals were chosen as offering the most accessible research in this area). Although there is much anecdotal information on how to…

Practical suggestions for effective lecturing are offered and what educational objectives are accomplishable by means of lecturing are discussed in this guide. The following topics are addressed: effective lecture delivery, managing lecture content, and motivating listeners. Ways to vary the stimuli and making a point in lecture delivery are…

The influence of the Doctor Fox effect on student ratings on instruction was examined. The idea for the Doctor Fox effect stemmed from the work of Erving Goffman and his notion that expressive behavior may influence an audience as much or more than substance when there is little time or reason for the audience to evaluate the presentation (1950).…

A study was undertaken to assess the efficacy of the spaced lecture as a possible alternative to the traditional lecture method. The spaced lecture separates note-taking from intensive listening. Two hundred male and female freshman and sophomore students at a junior college in Georgia in fall 1978, in intact classes, were administered three main…

The Discovery-Expository Instrument is a classroom observation scale which measures the position of a teacher's presentation on a continuum of discovery presentation (in which the student is encouraged to solve problems with minimal help from the teacher), to expository presentation (in which the teacher provides a complete description and…

Three methods of teaching--traditional lecture, Socratic, and radical humanist-- are examined as they are used at the college level of instruction. It is argued that these methods are based on teaching theories that differ from one another in terms of assumptions about the teacher-student relationship, the nature of knowledge and truth, the…

For ease of presentation, advanced grammar teaching techniques are briefly considered under the headings of structuralism (belief in the effectiveness of presenting grammar rules) and contextualism (belief in the maximum use by students of what they know in the target language). The structuralist's problem of establishing a syllabus is discussed…

The problem of the study was the effectiveness of three teaching techniques -- lecture-demonstration procedure supplemented with the programed textbook, autoinstructional procedure using only the programed textbook, and the conventional lecture-demonstration procedure. The control-experimental group method was used to collect the data from 110…

This study tries to establish a baseline for the teaching of the French subjunctive in the United States and to encourage further scholarship by summarizing past activities. Distinctive subjunctive structures were extracted from 18 French newspapers and magazines and 15 recorded, non-directed interviews with native informants, thus providing…

In fall 1970 several sections of a one-semester required U.S. history course (History 27: American History and Constitution) at Cerritos College (California) were combined into a joint lecture-discussion (JL) for 200 or more students. The opportunities for providing two lecturers stressing their topical specialties in group discussions seemed…

Focusing on the impact of participant characteristics on learning, this study investigated whether certain teaching methods are more effective than others in changing the knowledge and attitudes of adults with specific personality profiles. A total of 117 persons from each of five sections of a course ("Coaching and Developing Individuals")…