Learning styles vary among individuals, and understanding which instructional tools certain learning styles prefer can be utilized to enhance student learning. Students in the introductory Food Science and Human Nutrition course (FSHN 101), taught at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, were asked to complete Gregorc's Learning Style…

Science-technology circles were powerfully shaken three years ago by the granting of annual subsidies of one hundred thousand yuan to specially invited professors when the "Changjiang Scholars" Program set up by Li Ka-Shing and the Ministry of Education started up. Today, another big uproar has been triggered by Qinghua University's…

We conduct research workshops twice each semester in our cell biology lecture course. Instead of solely analyzing data obtained by others, students form groups to design research questions and experimental protocols on a given topic. The main focus is the process of scientific thinking, not simply obtaining a correct product. (Contains 3 tables…

This study evaluated students' affective learning in an introductory computing course that was taught in Hong Kong once in a lecture format and twice in a rich interactive multimedia online format to 414 college students in all. A simplified experience sampling method was used to assess affective learning at the midterm and end of each course in…

Interactivity in the classroom is reported to promote a more active learning environment, facilitate the building of learning communities, provide greater feedback for lecturers, and help student motivation. Various definitions of interactivity exist in the literature, alternately focusing on the participants, structure and technology. The "PLS…

In a recent study we showed that physics students' problem-solving performance can depend strongly on problem representation, and that giving students a choice of problem representation can have a significant impact on their performance [ P. B. Kohl and N. D. Finklestein, Phys. Rev. ST. Phys. Educ. Res. 1, 010104 (2005) ] In this paper, we…

This paper describes a student essay competition with the title "What makes a good engineering lecturer?" run by the Engineering Subject Centre of the UK Higher Education Academy. The competition was intended primarily to provide engineering lecturers with general feedback. The aim of the paper is to make the outcomes of the competition…

This study investigates the application of voice recognition technology to online lectures focusing on the efficacy of the text component of a multimedia presentation. Specifically, participants were provided with online access to multimedia instructional packages comprising an image of the lecturer with accompanying computer slides, plus…

In this report, the effectiveness of prototypes of interactive learning environments (ILEs) is compared with printed learning environments or traditional face-to-face lectures. The learning content for all conditions was a course on inferential statistics for first-year college students. In the learning materials, a clear distinction was made…

As part of a review of its Psychology department, William Rainey Harper College in Illinois conducted a study of 400 students who had taken at least 3 courses in the department from fall 1989 to fall 1993. Questionnaires were sent to the students in spring 1995, requesting information on their perceptions of the effectiveness of courses in the…

A series of administrative and pedagogical questions about class size and the training of graduate teaching assistants caused the director of the freshman English program and the head of the Humanities department at Michigan Technological University to assemble an experimental class in freshman English. The course consisted of 113 students and 9…

Two experiments were conducted to investigate why lecture notes aid expository writing after a 1-week delay between lecture acquisition and essay writing. Experiment 1 examines the context hypothesis that deactivation of lecture schema must occur before attempts to reinstantiate context can aid writing. Results with 74 undergraduate students did…

College teachers can act as intermediaries between a class and a body of knowledge by making three important contributions: structure, evaluation, and support. The teacher's task is to keep the student's initial drive and enthusiasm intact while thwarting the desire to be content with easy answers. Teachers need to encourage a critical outlook and…

Student course performance and course evaluation were compared for two methods of teaching general psychology. The self-paced method consisted of a modified Keller Plan (PSI) arrangement in which students progressed through small instructional units at their own pace. The lecture/discussion method consisted of a modified form of the traditional…

The effect of computer-assisted instruction versus the traditional lecture method on final grades was compared with two groups of students taking two business organization classes at Fayetteville Technical Institute. Thirty-two students attended four 1-hour lectures per week (the control group), while 38 students received computer-assisted…