As one of a series of studies being conducted to develop a useful (predictive) model of the instructional design process that is appropriate to military technical training settings, this study performed initial evaluations on two pieces of instructional design software developed by M. David Merrill and colleagues at Utah State University i.e.,…

A study examined young children's emergent reading abilities through analysis of their assisted storybook interactions. Twelve storybooks were read to 41 preschool children during a two-week period preceding interviews. During the interviews, each child was asked to "read" a favorite storybook aloud to a stuffed animal and to the…

This paper reports the results of a study conducted to evaluate the reality of interaction in a web-based distance education course. The learners were Egyptian first-grade secondary school students (15-16 years old) and the learning subject is mathematics. To investigate students' interactions via the Web, a Web-based learning environment was…

This paper evaluates Interactive Television (ITV) Engineering courses, Statics and Dynamics, from the perspective of host-site students. The study took place at the University of Kentucky during the Spring 2004 semester utilizing survey methods to identify factors that are influential in determining students' satisfaction with a particular course.…

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…

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 study evaluated the referral for special education services of the Austin (Texas) Independent School District. Recommendations were made for streamlining the process, for improving the communication/interaction between regular and special education teachers, and for classroom instruction. Study results included the finding that referral is a…

Recent second language acquisition research has shown that language learners must interact with more competent speakers in order to learn to manage conversation. Such interaction is rare in second language classrooms, but dialogue journal writing, written interaction that shares some of the features of oral conversation, allows for conversational…

This report examines the contribution of secondary vocational education to learning outcomes. It is targeted to research scholars with professional interests related to vocational education, effective schooling, learning, and methodology. The first of six chapters is an "Introduction" (Lawrence Hotchkiss, Jeanne Desy). "The Effects of Vocational…

This study of the role which learner control plays in the success of interactive courseware (ICW) was designed to determine whether providing students with an option to review content in ICW--when attempting to answer embedded questions--improves their achievement on a posttest without adversely affecting the amount of time it takes to complete…

The context of learning with computers is different from that of more traditional educational media because the computer is a new medium whose interactivity supports dynamic, evident, and malleable representations of abstract ideas. The model proposed addresses some mediating factors of the environment in which computers are used that affect…

Research on interactive thinking has revealed that teachers make interactive decisions in response to students' behavior and to the flow of the activities or routines they have established based on their planning. The purpose of this study was to describe the interactive information processing of preservice teachers, and to identify similarities…

Although student interest is greater than ever, college forensics programs are limited in their expansion by budget considerations that restrict travel. However, with reasonable effort and perseverance new programs can be initiated or existing ones expanded to integrate the educational community and the community at large into a forensics program.…

A study proposed a predictive model to explain self-disclosure to parents based on biological sex of subject and perceived psychological sex typing of the parent. It was hypothesized that: (1) the linear combination of biological sex type of subject and subjects perception of mother (psychological scores) would significantly predict…

The need for an analytical approach to the study of phatic, metalingual, and metacommunicative functions in asymmetrical communicative situations (between native speakers and language learners) is discussed. The study presents theoretical frameworks for gambits and repairs, the linguistic phenomena that primarily serve those functions, and…