In 1996, Learning Languages published an article describing a cultural exchange that occurred from 1991 to 1993 between Breck School, a private school in Minneapolis, and Paul Dukas School, a high-needs school in Brest, France. Much of that exchange was carried out through online telecommunications using the Minitel. The result of a two-year…

This article describes the rationale for and development of a computer-based instrument that helps identify commonly held science misconceptions. The instrument, known as the Science Beliefs Test, is a 47-item instrument that targets topics in chemistry, physics, biology, earth science, and astronomy. The use of an online data collection system…

Effective communication between homes and schools can be essential in helping students experience success in the classroom. Unfortunately, the topic of establishing mechanisms for meaningful parent-teacher communication is often slighted during the preparation of teachers. New teachers entering classrooms need the opportunity to interact and…

Introduction: This study investigated unmonitored referrals in a nationwide, collaborative chat reference service. Specifically, it examined the extent to which questions are referred, the types of questions that are more likely to be referred than others, and the level of user satisfaction with the referrals in the collaborative chat reference…

We are teacher educators (in elementary science and mathematics) who are enthusiastic about technology as a teaching tool--though it is as new to us as it is to our university colleagues. We recently led a United States Department of Education Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grant project entitled TechLinks. In an effort to…

"Intelligent building" is a term that has been coined in recent years to describe buildings in which computer technology is intensely applied in two areas of building operations: control systems and shared tenant services. This two-part study provides an overview of the intelligent building industry and reports on issues related to the…

A case study examined the writing problems of Jay, a freshman composition student at the University of Massachusetts, to determine how teachers should handle students whose composing styles are not suited to writing with word processors. Interviews, classroom observation, and careful analyses of Jay's essays in progress and logsheets were…

Current issues in educational communications and technology are addressed in this collection of 51 papers, which are mainly research reports. The first five papers were prepared for a symposium on the status of research in instructional technology, an introduction and four discussions of divergent points of view in the current controversy over the…

The first of two papers describes the author's experiences teaching a narrow-cast instructional development course at Indiana University. Among the disadvantages of the experience were the logistics of coordinating the instructional activities between two campuses, additional preparation time requirements, diminished student-teacher interactions,…

This study examined the relative effectiveness of different types of computer feedback (both corrective and noncorrective) on student achievement. A total of 41 students in grades 9 and 10 comprised the two treatment groups. The subjects all interacted with a computer program written by the researcher. The first treatment group received corrective…

A study involving 716 male and 1,113 female first-year students admitted to the University of Delaware in the fall of 1985 was conducted to investigate the differential performance of men and women on the mathematics section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Data collected included SAT math scores; gender; and number of years of high school…

The Alford Information Technology Centre represents a new approach to the provision of information technology in schools. The center is a single-story extension to an existing secondary school, housing a wide range of information handling media, intended to serve both the schools and the local community. The report's eight sections (1) describe…

In "The Research University of the Future," the first of five papers compiled here, Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis chronicles the history of research universities with emphasis on the past two decades and discusses issues and concerns related to the future of the university as well as the research library. In the second paper, "The Future…

In an effort to provide information about the effect of computer use in schools on student achievement, attitudes, dropout rate, and learning time, a review of instructional computing research analyzed studies done between 1980 and 1987 using statistical summary procedures. Reviewers used a meta analysis procedure to calculate effect size as they…

The Mathematics Improvement Component (MIC) was implemented in the Columbus (Ohio) Public Schools to improve the skills and achievement levels of pupils who were low achievers in mathematics. Three programs comprised MIC: the Elementary Program, the Middle School Program, and the Middle School Pilot Program. In the first two (the non-pilot)…