Effective adventure programming is explained in terms of the "significant learning" experience, involving periods of tension, questioning, and transfer during personal and social learning. Adventure programming that is supportive, adaptive, and properly sequenced maximizes the potential of significant learning. Trust- and…

Learner engagement ranges from passive interest to dynamic interaction to flow state. Engaged teaching and learning online also progresses through three levels: transfer (converting conventional instruction to technology-enhanced environments), translation (redefining instruction using technology's capabilities), and transcendence (inventing new…

Proposes a framework for thinking about how metacognition research might apply to design activities. Examines two basic approaches to supporting metacognition: strategy training, and creation of a supportive social environment for metacognition. Identifies two kinds of content that are taught using these two approaches: knowledge about a specific…

Proposes "technicisation" theory with five central hypotheses to account for various aspects of foreign students learning Technical English (TE), including its linguistic, learning, experiential, cultural, and motivational dimensions. Suggests that the fundamental hypotheses are applicable to TE learning but they may, mutatis mutandis,…

Describes a study that explored college students' perceptions of computer-based technology in a variety of academic disciplines and their perceptions of the effects this technology had on their learning. Topics include students' general perceptions of technology and learning; technology use in lectures; communications technology; and gender…

This study of eighth and ninth graders explored gender differences in computer assisted learning using different presentation formats (animation, still graphics, and text). Results showed that the gender effect was significant in procedural learning but not in descriptive learning, and that treatment effect was significant among girls and…

Discusses the consequences of tracking students, how one English teacher moved to heterogeneous grouping, and multiple intelligences and tracking. Asks why educators continue to track students when Howard Gardner has shown that there are at least seven distinct ways that humans come to know and learn. (RS)

Provides human performance technologists in health care, business and industry, human services, higher learning, government agencies, and the military with criteria for evaluating commercially produced instructional programs designed for older adult learners. Older adults' physical changes are described, learning performance is discussed, and a…

Thirty-two factual statements, half consistent and half not consistent with subjects' prior knowledge, were processed by 140 sixth and seventh graders. Half were directed to use elaborative interrogation (using prior knowledge) to answer why each statement was true. Across all memory measures, elaborative interrogation subjects performed better…

Identifies six stages adult learners pass through as they become confident using electronic mail. Understanding the stages of learning to use technology empowers the learner through the knowledge that feelings of tension and frustration will be overcome. (Author/AEF)

Suggests that the study of microdevelopment offers a potentially powerful way to relate learning and development where similar changes occur but in differing time frames. Microdevelopment analyzes short-term changes as developmental functions. Individuals and groups function at widely different developmental levels and grow in diverse nonlinear…

Nonuniversal theory can be used to reframe the learning-development dichotomy into a spectrum of important changes, ranging from small-scale learning events to large-scale developmental shifts. Using the universal-to-unique continuum as an organizing framework, several change mechanisms can be identified as necessary for movement through…

Sees learning as a component of development. Explains how cognitive growth can result from dialectical interactions among modes of learning and attentional mental capacity, and that these modes and components of attention relate to contextual function areas which, being neuropsychological units, can be clarified as to function by connectionist…

Describes a year-long process of inquiry and scientific learning with a class of fourth-grade students. Describes how the students observed, questioned, and wondered their way to new understandings of the life of birds and the nature of inquiry learning. (SR)

Twenty ways are presented to help students with special needs gain and apply learning strategies more efficiently, including helping students discriminate whether information is useful or irrelevant, focusing on metacognitive development, encouraging self-sufficiency, helping students organize material into meaningful units, and having student…