The Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory's (McREL's) Mid-continent Alliance focuses on technical areas that must be considered by every school system that is serious about reform. This document contains four articles that focus on four important pieces of the school-reform puzzle: (1) standards and benchmarks for learning; (2)…

A possible method of solving problems of knowledge representation and system adaptation in a hypermedia environment was examined. The method, based on the notion of semantic networks, uses the technique of knowledge mapping. In the process of reading a hypermedia document, the learner constructs a knowledge map (KM) specifying the relationships…

This book provides a comprehensive synthesis of major developments, trends, issues, and practices relative to self-direction and adult education and offers strategies that have direct application to practice. Its intended audiences are practitioners and professors, students, and researchers in adult education. Part I is an introduction. Chapter 1…

With the emergence of interactive learning technologies, there are many questions which must be addressed concerning young learners. Such sophisticated technology combined with thoughtful instructional design has the potential for both encouraging achievement and stimulating important scholarly attributes such as curiosity and other aspects of…

This document reports an experiment designed to assess the effects of learner control over the level of challenge in computer-assisted instruction (CAI) and collect data that will guide the design of future learner control experiments. The subjects were 78 undergraduate students in the College of Education at a large public university. The CAI…

Contrasting traditional linear media (in which all learners proceed through the instructional materials in an essentially fixed sequence) with interactive technologies and hypermedia (in which two learners may take different paths through the same instructional materials), this paper highlights the importance of recording and analyzing the…

To prepare diverse learners for various roles in life, teachers should develop contextualized learning environments that enable students to develop individual skills while contributing to the knowledge of the classroom community. This is accomplished by integrating various subject matter domains with interdisciplinary themes that incorporate…

Companies and universities are increasingly moving to online delivery for much of their training and education needs, and designing and building quality distance education is a challenge facing many organizations. Option Six is an independent company that is building customized e-learning solutions. Over the last 2 years, the instructional…

If learners are to engage in science inquiry, they need significant support, or scaffolding, to help them mindfully do the cognitive science tasks that are just out of their reach. One approach for supporting learners is to design computational tools that incorporate scaffolding features to make new practices accessible and visible so learners can…

Laptops for students, increased teamwork and group interaction, and teaching as a facilitator of active learning have successfully converged in the classrooms of Northern Michigan University. This paper offers practical guidelines for integration strategies, theory, and outcomes assessments, based on a study undertaken for the 1999-2000 academic…

With the advent of constructivist oriented instruction in learning institutions comes an enormous challenge, that of structuring individual-centered learning within a community of learners. Within this instructional framework, struggles to satisfy both individual and group learning needs can lead to one canceling the other out. Tendencies towards…

This paper describes Virtual University (VU), a simulation of higher education administration that provides graduate students an instructional tool that offers an active learning environment, develops intrinsic motivation to learn, and serves as a practical, concrete learning experience. The first section describes VU, including features available…

AHA! is a simple Web-based adaptive hypermedia system. Because of this simplicity it has been studied and experimented with in several research groups. This paper identifies shortcomings in AHA! and presents AHA! version 2.0 which tries to overcome the known problems with AHA! while maintaining its biggest asset: simplicity. The paper illustrates…

The teacher-centered model that has dominated instruction for centuries is slowly giving way to a learner-centered conception with instructors in roles of facilitators, or "guides on the side." Active learning and collaboration increasingly characterize learning environments. E-learning is unable to promote learning on its own. Its use does not…

While the idea of reusing objects in digital learning environments is not new, continual strides are being made toward improving the prospects of reusability. A major trend in company training settings is to think of reusability in terms of a LMS (learning management system), but instructor use and pedagogies are little considered. This paper…