This article is the third in a series of four articles that present a new outlook on the methods of instructional design. The authors examine the nature of the process of instructional design, with the goal of stimulating discussion about designer roles. In this article, the authors consider the realization of scientific and educational theory…

In this article, the authors offer a framework that identifies two critical problems in designing inquiry-based instruction and suggests three models for developing instruction that overcomes those problems. The Protocol Model overcomes the Getting on Board Problem by providing students an initial experience through clearly delineated steps with a…

From the moment sighted children see their first dot, teachers find that they are fascinated by the braille code. If they are fortunate enough to have a classmate who reads braille, they have daily opportunities to observe braille used for a variety of purposes, from reading chapter books to solving problems with tactile graphics. Teachers of…

Continuous professional development is essential for upgrading and updating teachers because the rate of social and educational change makes pre-service training an inadequate basis for long term professional competence. The design of these continuous professional development programmes must be informed by an effective needs analysis that…

Today's schools and teachers are challenged with meeting the demands of specific content standards, high stakes assessment, and developing students from diverse backgrounds to be capable of competing in a global market. These twenty-first century students must not only possess critical thinking skills and the ability to process information, but…

MacArthur launched the digital media and learning initiative in 2006 to explore how digital media are changing the way young people learn, socialize, communicate, and play. Since 2006, the Foundation has awarded grants totaling more than $100 million for research, development of innovative new technologies, new learning environments for youth,…

The author's experiences and those of the students he encounters at elite campuses no longer resemble the common experience of many college students today. What people used to call "nontraditional" students--older, working, married, and maybe still living at home--now constitute a large and growing percentage of those attending college in the…

"King Corn" is in so many ways the story of how government food policy has entirely remade the food landscape in the United States over the last 40 years. From the massive expansion of the number of acres of corn grown across the country, to the ever-increasing ways that corn is incorporated into the food production process, to the…

The 2008 commercial video game "Spore" allowed more than a million players to design their own life forms. Starting from single-celled organisms players played through a caricature of natural history. Press coverage of the game's release offer two frames for thinking about the implications of the game. Some scientists and educators saw the game as…

This article describes an instructional lesson the author developed to help students use parody to read and write original poetry. The author begins this article with an introduction to parody and a rationale for using it as an instructional strategy. Then, he describes materials and procedures he used and he shares samples of student writing. He…

Blended learning has become a prominent method of course content delivery in higher education. Researchers have found that motivation, communication, and course design are three factors that contribute to the overall success of blended learning courses and students' satisfaction with blended learning courses. This qualitative study also found that…

If our chosen aim in science education is to be inclusive and to improve students' learning achievements, then we must identify teaching methodologies that are appropriate for teaching and learning specific knowledge. Karagiorgi and Symeo (2005) remind us that instructional designers are thus challenged to translate the philosophy of…

When a course designed around cooperative, problem-centered instruction attracts learners with a wide range of experience in the topic, should learners be grouped heterogeneously or homogeneously in terms of their relative expertise? In this study, learners were randomly distributed between the two types of groups; learning gains, satisfaction,…

As institutions of higher learning rapidly expand their offerings of online, hybrid and other distance learning opportunities for their students, librarians must adapt, adopt and improve information literacy instruction methods to accommodate instructors they may never meet and classes they may never see. Many responses to these challenges, such…

This paper presents eight practical guidelines that teachers can use to make core instruction more systematic and explicit for students with or at-risk for mathematics disabilities. In the paper, we use the notion of explicit and systematic instruction as a foundation for intensifying core math instruction. Explicit and systematic core instruction…