Academics have a range of learning activities and tools they can incorporate to enable students to achieve the objectives of their courses. Strategies such as role-play have been used with learners in face-to-face settings to allow students to experience learning using a range of learner identities. Yet, with the exception of role-plays,…

It is our experience that many Web-based training (WBT) systems do not consider the latest advances in teaching or learning paradigms--they simply reflect Web technology. We believe that such a technical approach to building WBT systems has a number of drawbacks, since WBT systems are primarily about teaching and learning, rather than about…

Finding practical ideas about college reading and learning strategy programs that have been drawn from theory and research is difficult for most veteran instructors but is even more difficult for those instructors new to the field. Over a decade ago the authors reviewed the literature and generated a list of their own "best ideas" as a way of…

The authors used microgenetic methods in 2 experiments to examine children's and adults' progress from initial attempts at spelling nonwords to later direct memory retrieval of the spellings. Participants repeatedly spelled nonwords presented in computerized, dictated-word spelling tests over several weeks. Following each spelling, participants…

For many teachers and students, it was ThinkQuest that gave them their first experiences with the Internet. A collaborative competition, created by Advanced Network & Services (now managed by the Oracle Education Foundation), ThinkQuest asked students to form teams and create Web sites that were designed to help other students learn something. In…

This paper reviews research evaluating the effectiveness of Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) for reading. Nearly fifteen years of research has demonstrated the effectiveness of this classwide peer tutoring program in improving the reading performance of high-, average-, and low-performing students, including students with disabilities,…

Information technology has had a striking impact on learners and learning. The world of learning technology today is radically different from that of just a decade ago, and the world of learning technology a decade from now will be radically different from that of today. Learning technologies are in a state of "interpretive flexibility": the…

This study investigated the effects of team-skills training on collaborative learning in a university setting. Groups worked under one of three conditions: (1) groups received team-skill training as a group and remained in that group (Trained-Together), (2) groups received team-skills training, but were then reassigned into new groups…

Most accounts of the Stroop effect (Stroop, 1935) emphasize its negative aspect, namely, that in particular situations, processing of an irrelevant stimulus dimension interferes with participants' performance of the instructed task. In contrast, this paper emphasizes the fact that, even with that interference, participants actually can (and…

Emerging parallel processing and increased flexibility during the acquisition of cognitive skills form a combination that is hard to reconcile with rule-based models that often produce brittle behavior. Rule-based models can exhibit these properties by adhering to 2 principles: that the model gradually learns task-specific rules from instructions…

The field of children's learning was thriving when the Merrill-Palmer Quarterly was launched; the field later went into eclipse and now is in the midst of a resurgence. This commentary examines reasons for these trends, and describes the emerging field of children's learning. In particular, the new field is seen as differing from the old in its…

This study investigated changes in teachers' and students' perceptions of students' effort, strategy use, and academic difficulties when strategy instruction was infused into the classroom curriculum. The sample consisted of 201 students with learning disabilities, 210 average achievers, and 57 teachers from Grades 4-9 in two urban and suburban…

This article explores learner-generated drawing, a strategy in which learners construct representative illustrations in support of learning goals. Both applied and empirical literature is reviewed with the purpose of stimulating research on this strategy. Clear from this review is the gap that exists between prescriptive readings on…

The purpose of this article is to identify some necessary conditions of learning. To learn something, the learner must discern what is to be learned (the object of learning). Discerning the object of learning amounts to discerning its critical aspects. To discern an aspect, the learner must experience potential alternatives, that is, variation in…

Designing developmentally appropriate learning experiences requires an understanding of an instructional strategy known as simplification. Simplification, as the term implies, reduces the level of difficulty of a task, or some aspect of a task, for the learner. This article presents ideas regarding implementation of this strategy to accommodate a…