This paper presents tips for educators to integrate and facilitate virtual learning teams within online courses. The techniques are grounded in current research and theoretical foundations of systems theory and group dynamics. Tips emphasize facilitation of virtual learning teams, assembled for the purpose of formal education and supported by…

Family support staff need a broad range of knowledge and skills and an understanding of the multiple psychosocial, biological, and cultural factors influencing human behavior, development, and relationships. This training curriculum, based on concepts of adult learning and the assumption that feeling and self-reflection are at the core of…

This book focuses on results from secondary analyses of the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) and implications of these analyses for policy, practice, and further research on adult literacy. Part I contains an introduction and three additional chapters that provide a substantive summary of the NALS and its purposes: "Introduction: Adult…

This paper discusses the challenges of identifying gifted students from underrepresented or special populations. Reasons for underrepresentation of students from special populations are reviewed and include biases in standardized testing, underreferral of students from diverse cultural and ethnic groups to gifted programs by teachers, and the…

This paper contends that many of the difficulties students of Chinese have in reading comprehension are directly related to their level of understanding of Chinese language and culture, and that these difficulties could be alleviated by providing students with knowledge about the value system, social customs, formation of Chinese characters and…

A review of literature on technology and second language (L2) instruction focused on the use of seven different technologies: television/videotapes/tape recordings; hand computers; computer conferencing; electronic mail (e-mail); multimedia and hypermedia; computer-assisted language learning; and machine translation. A secondary purpose of the…

This paper discusses problems confronting the use of group-based project work as an instructional strategy in higher education, and describes two technical courses (i.e., courses in online learning and applications of business information technology) at the University of Twente (Netherlands) in which course-specific World Wide Web environments are…

Engaging learners on the World Wide Web is more than sending Web pages to the user. However, for many course delivery software programs, the smallest unit of delivery is a Web page. How content experts can create engaging Web pages has largely been ignored or taken for granted. This paper reports on an authoring model for creating pedagogically…

Objectives of this practicum were to: increase student knowledge of how to use the Internet to carry out research; improve the competency of teachers, thereby enabling them to teach students to use Internet resources; and develop an instructional unit that could be used by students, teachers, and librarians to facilitate use of the Internet to…

Technology can be utilized as a tool for creating macrocontexts for teaching integrated science and language arts. Teachers can use several criteria for deciding what kind of technology-based resources to use; the teacher's level of confidence in science and language arts content and knowledge of technology-based resources is vital to making such…

The work reported in this paper focused on the creation of an Internet-based resource for preservice and inservice teachers. A World Wide Web-based instructional resource was developed by a participatory team comprised of subject area and instructional design experts as well as potential users including preservice and inservice teachers. The…

Noting that parents are their children's first teachers, this book presents activities to help parents prepare their children for school. The chapters are: (1) "Getting Started," which discusses chores, hobbies, television viewing, socialization, preschool, learning styles, supplies, work area, and motivation; (2) "Reading,"…

This facilitator's guide, and the videotape it accompanies, is designed to demonstrate ways in which the new visions of science education for the 21st century might be translated into classroom practice. The National Research Council's (NRC) National Science Education Standards, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Benchmarks…

This book is a political analysis of the role of adult education as an agency of cultural and ideological significance in India from the turbulent period in the 1940s onward. The introduction examines the roots of education in India, the English studies courses that developed when India was a British colony, and continuation of colonial…

The rationale for using critical autobiography projects in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction is discussed, and procedures for implementation are outlined. Writing a critical autobiography involves the student's presenting a personal narrative while exploring external factors influencing his life. Critical experiences in life provide…