Describes support given to Israeli teachers and several students who could not keep up in an advanced English-as-a-Second Language classroom. A special program allowed the teacher to meet with them two extra hours per week immediately before class. As students' motivation to learn increased, they began completing their homework, improving…

Discusses the design of an innovative learning system that uses new technologies for the man-machine interface, incorporating a combination of Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text To Speech (TTS) synthesis. Highlights include using speech technologies to mimic the attributes of the ideal tutor and design features. (AEF)

Describes a program designed to improve the reading skills of second and third graders using work-study students as tutors. Finds: (1) 81% of the students made progress in reading; (2) at-risk learners need extensive vocabulary instruction and background building; and (3) tutors lacked sufficient educational background and knowledge of the reading…

Introduction: An earlier study of physicians' perceptions of interactive online learning showed that these were shaped both by program design and quality and the quality and quantity of interpersonal interaction. We explore instructor roles in enhancing online learning through interpersonal interaction and the learning theories that inform these.…

Our community university, located along the Texas-Mexico border, in cooperation with a local elementary school campus is involved in a project focused on working with elementary students and their families in relation to early literacy development. The project provides preservice teachers with a structured opportunity to work directly with Latino…

The Helping One Student to Succeed (HOSTS) Language Arts volunteer tutoring program was evaluated by comparing pre- and post-intervention scores on standardized measures of reading using a 5-month test-retest interval. Students (n = 129) from six elementary schools in Michigan that utilize the HOSTS program served as the experimental group, and…

The term "design" is being understood more and more as a methodological process, together with its acceptance as the result of such a process. As a process, it is a stage in the courseware engineering life cycle which primarily focuses on rendering the development process more effective and on enhancing the qualities of the finished system,…

This article provides a synthesis of research in which parents provided academic instruction to their own children. The effectiveness of parent tutoring in 37 studies was examined across grade level, basic skill area (e.g., reading, math), training feature (e.g., treatment length, availability of consultation), treatment fidelity, type of…

The learning difficulties for new entrant chemistry students from a multi-national, regional, tertiary education institution in the South Pacific were investigated using a purpose-designed diagnostic instrument. The instrument contained 25 items distributed across three themes: scientific reasoning, numeracy and scientific language literacy. The…

The usability of classroom interventions plays a significant role in the likelihood that they will reach wide scale use. The current report describes the usability testing of a software application designed for ClassWide Peer Tutoring (CWPT), a research-based classroom intervention. Initially, CWPT teachers rated the usability of the software and…

The development and use of computer mediated communications as a tool for teaching and learning has grown considerably in recent years. It has been developed to extend the conventional face-to-face tutorial environment and for distance-learning purposes, actively engaging students in productive learning situations. Here we document the findings of…

This review of the literature on peer and cross-age tutoring emphasizes programs in mathematics and suggests that such programs have positive academic outcomes for African American and other minority students as well as for White students who participate as tutors, as tutees, or both. Such programs also appear to have a positive impact on a…

There is increasing interest in embodied agents (or avatars) and the effects on human cognition and motivation. Specifically there is an increasing interest in the use of embodied agents in e-learning environments. However, empirical investigations into the use of embodied agents in online education are limited. Our aim is to provide a framework…

The ultimate aim of this research is to specify and implement a general authoring framework for content and knowledge engineering for Intelligent Educational Systems (IES). In this context we attempt to develop an authoring tool supporting this framework that is powerful in its functionality, generic in its support of instructional strategies and…

Using modeling languages is essential to the construction of educational systems based on software engineering principles and methods. Furthermore, the instructional design is undoubtedly the cornerstone of the design and development of educational systems. Although several methodologies and languages have been proposed for the specification of…