Classical physics has a long history of using demonstrations and experiments to develop ideas in introductory courses. The purpose of this exploration is to examine the effectiveness of a desk-top activity for helping students develop abstract reasoning. In the pilot exploration, students in three laboratory sections of a single physics course…

To explore what social and educational infrastructure is needed to support classroom use of student response systems (Roschelle et al., 2004), this study investigated the ways in which student characteristics and course design choices were related to students' assessments of the contribution of clicker use to their learning and involvement in the…

Audience response systems (ARS) or clickers, as they are commonly called, offer a management tool for engaging students in the large classroom. Basic elements of the technology are discussed. These systems have been used in a variety of fields and at all levels of education. Typical goals of ARS questions are discussed, as well as methods of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an undergraduate adapted physical education course on the attitudes of pre-service physical educators toward individuals with disabilities using the Physical Educators Attitude toward Teaching Individuals with Disabilities, third edition. The participants for this study were 108 students…

This study aims to examine the design of approaches for inquiry learning with multimedia resources in primary classrooms. The study describes the development of a multimedia learning unit that helps learners understand the natural phenomenon of the movement of the Earth. An analysis of the use of the multimedia learning unit by a teacher in two…

A new initiative to incorporate diversity issues into the common engineering curriculum at the University of Wollongong (UoW) in Australia is outlined and the effect on student awareness quantified. The diversity issues were illustrated in the example of women in engineering, seeing that the numbers of women in engineering have dropped drastically…

Interteaching is a new method of classroom instruction that is based on behavioral principles but offers more flexibility than other behaviorally based methods. We examined the effectiveness of interteaching relative to a traditional form of classroom instruction--the lecture. In Study 1, participants in a graduate course in special education took…

This nine-unit curriculum translates current scientific research on early brain development into practical suggestions to help early childhood professionals understand the reciprocal link between caregiving and brain development. The curriculum was created and extensively field-tested by the Erikson Institute Faculty Development Project on the…

This study explored relations between students' motivational and cognitive orientations as assessed by the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), and their attitudes and choices relating to online lecture viewing. Examination performance was also assessed to determine if there were particular affinities between certain…

Understanding student performance in Algebra I is important because this course serves as the gateway to advanced coursework in mathematics and science through the remainder of high school and into postsecondary education. In the current study, we analyzed secondary data to evaluate the relationship between selected indicators of mathematics and…

The speech introduces a colloquium on the teaching of listening comprehension to students of English for academic purposes (EAP). The colloquium's aim is to address ways that EAP instructors can improve students' lecture listening skills by discussing the types of background discourse knowledge and listening strategies that…

This study focuses on student concept changes in acids and bases. Variables include field dependent level, personal independence level, interest in science or chemistry, teaching strategy, and student gender. This study of Grade 10 students (N=81) provides information relevant to secondary school chemistry learning, teaching, and concept change.…

Three experiments describe the effects of imagery on learning a large and integrated body of information from a college lecture. It was hypothesized that high-imagery phrases would be more easily recalled and would promote recall of abstract verbal phrases in close temporal proximity to them. In experiment 1, 22 undergraduates attended a lecture…

The purposes of the lecture method in higher education are considered. The advocates of lecturing claim that this approach can be used to present knowledge to students, to foster intellectual skills, and to change students' attitudes and values. Research evidence suggests that: the lecture can be effective for expounding facts and principles,…

The results of an experiment indicate that there are no differences in student achievement between a computer-assisted geography unit and a lecture based unit on the same topic. (DE)