The recent press for high-stakes accountability has challenged school leaders to use data to guide the practices of teaching and learning. This article considers how local school leaders build data-driven instructional systems to systematically improve student learning. Such systems are presented as a framework involving data acquisition, data…

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, to define verbally the six elements of education treated by the author; second, by replacing the verbally-defined elements with symbols, to depict various educational patterns distinguished by the inclusion of, exclusion of, and the relationship between, these elements." (Author)

Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) of India uses multiple media and modes for reaching out to its distant learners. For most of the programmes offered to these learners, print is the master medium and other media supplement it. Instructions for the Bachelor in Education (B.Ed.), one of the popular programmes of IGNOU, are also…

Educational interventions that are currently in vogue in higher education settings are based upon constructivist approaches, whereby students learn content within the context of authentic activities and problem-based scenarios. Certainly these approaches have value, but proponents of these approaches have been somewhat successful in convincing…

A survey of the development of instructional systems in the Soviet Union. (Editor)

This paper examines the relevancy of the concept of accountability and discusses three main forms that accountability may take. (AK)

Describes Instructional Systems Design (ISD) and the subjectively assesses the worth of the approach by briefly addressing three of the most common complaints against it: (1) Does ISD spoon-feed the learner? (2) Is ISD more concerned with front and analysis than actual production and delivery of instructional material? (3) Is ISD nonhumanistic?…

Discusses knowledge management systems (KMS) and their application to instructional design. Highlights include a history of computing and instructional systems; computer-supported collaborative work environments; object-oriented systems; reusability; a conceptual framework for distributed instructional design; and examples of support tools.…

This article describes a framework for managing the life cycle of knowledge in organizations. The framework emerges from years of work with the laboratories and facilities that are under the direction of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The article begins by describing the instructional systems design (ISD) process and how it is used to…

To understand how teacher education might build the knowledge it needs, the editors of this issue investigate how organizations outside of education create and maintain "self-improving" systems that enable them to learn how to get better at what they do. To learn about knowledge building in teacher education, the research reported here also looks…

This article describes a systematic method of viewing the important variables which must be considered in selecting a media system for a learning goal. (Author)

The total system view shows that the school library is inseparable from the system it serves. It is a part of the total system, its objectives are derived from the total system, and its operations and procedures are designed to facilitate its contribution to the total system. (12 references) (Author)

Presents remarks on constructivism that are based on a discussion in an earlier issue. Topics addressed include the role of theory in the instructional design process; the construction of knowledge; differences between objectivists and constructivists; knowledge representation; entry behaviors and task analysis; and instructional systems…

This paper presents a theoretical framework for viewing elements that comprise distance education instructional systems in terms of dialogue. It is assumed that learning is mediated by intrapersonal dialogue and facilitated by interpersonal dialogue. Every resource in a distance education instructional system (eg, instructor availability,…