Applying ergonomics to the classroom involves the five principles of job design: variety of assignments, identity/importance, autonomy/control, feedback/recognition, and opportunity for personal growth. (SK)

Real structural changes challenge traditional views about the way things should be. A new image can guide education into the twenty-first century and transform education by purposeful design. (JOW)

Four levels of integration of diverse content are contributions, additive, transformation, and social action. A survey of 59 New York teachers discovered that pluralistic approaches are not implemented because of assumptions of lack of class time, lack of relevance to some subjects, and lack of need in homogeneous classrooms. (SK)

Discussion of visual literacy, visual cognition, visual thinking and learning, and visual knowledge focuses on women and gender differences. Topics addressed include educational equality and the visual, including equality versus difference; women and mass culture; difference and the design of visual instruction; and feminist education and the…

This response to criticism of a previous article discusses the ways in which learners exist in and move through communities and how changing locations affect learning processes. Topics addressed include prior knowledge; practice-based, situated learning; political philosophy; learning as a social practice; and implications for the design of…

Provides recommendations for designing computer screens that will have positive effects on readability and learning. Topics discussed include the use of capital versus lower case letters; interlinear space; line length; and strategies that aid recall, including the use of chunks and margins, and the location of information in relation to graphics.…

Suggests that intermediate microeconomic theory instruction should emphasize individual elements of the topic as part of a general equilibrium model. Summarizes a model that can be used to highlight the unifying thread running through the subject. Discusses the submodels of the market, the consumer, the firm, and the economy as a whole. (SG)

Discusses instructional media and media selection principles that focus on solutions to learning problems. Three steps are described: (1) setting the learning objective, (2) choosing the best instructional technique, and (3) performance evaluation and feedback. Discussion explains four types of media classified by how they react to student…

Discusses the issues of language, learning and teaching, and kids and teachers in a whole language classroom. (MG)

Identifies how researchers have defined active learning, and synthesizes current findings on the instructional designs that facilitate hands-on problem solving. Proposes three additional areas of inquiry into the instructional needs of active learners. (SR)

Describes a study that was conducted with graduate students to verify empirically that the conventional spatial arrangements of diagrams illustrating relationships among concepts are interpreted consistently and to examine the role of spatial arrangements in establishing meaning. Implications of results for graphic and instructional designers are…

Describes six guiding principles to help training developers use content experts more efficiently and effectively to ensure training materials contain accurate, complete, and relevant information. Topics discussed include assessing content experts and the use of productivity tools, including checklists, test validation forms, and point sheets.…

Reviews the literature on the cognitive style field dependent/field independent (FD/FI) and suggests implications for educational technologists in their efforts to address individual differences among learners during the instructional design process that would narrow the differential learning gain between FD and FI learners. Testing for FD/FI is…

Designers of distance education must be concerned with learning style, isolation, feedback, pacing, learner control, interaction, motivation, access to resources, and course objectives. Some problems are alleviated by such audiographic technologies as telewriter systems. (SK)

The emphasis in the integrated model of character education on the development of the whole person and interaction with the whole environment requires that character education be seen as a dimension of the total curriculum. It means integrating character education into the academic curriculum, recreational activities, administration, and social…