Many adults in basic literacy programs tend to drop out if they cannot see the program's relevance to the real world. In response to this problem, Odessa College (Odessa, Texas) developed, implemented, and evaluated an innovative program for adult education through technology designed to provide high quality, multimedia literacy education directly…

In the fall of 1990, seven teachers at the Ralph Bunche School, a public elementary school in Harlem (New York) began an experiment in school restructuring they called the Computer Mini-School. An unexpected outcome of the project was an increase in standardized test scores among their 120 students. This outcome is explored. It is argued that the…

Project HAITT STARS (now in its fourth year) was designed to provide Haitian-, Spanish-, and Chinese-speaking high school students of limited English proficiency (who scored at or below the 40th percentile on the Language Assessment Battery) in three schools in Brooklyn and Queens, New York with instruction in the beginning through transitional…

The Institute for Academic Technology is a university/industry collaboration designed to advance the educational value of affordable technologies. A broad spectrum overview of the program's goals from the point of view of the director, a faculty view of participation, and the industry participant's rationale for program support are presented in…

Terms and concepts currently in use in adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction are defined and explained. They include: authentic or alternative assessment; computer-assisted language learning; critical literacy theory; family and intergenerational literacy; multiple intelligences and learning styles; practitioner inquiry, reflective…

MEDIT, a World Wide Web-based environment, aims at offering complementary support to traditional educational practices. The MEDIT approach distinguishes a set of virtual working spaces and provides the appropriate services for each of them. In addition to a generic hypermedia authoring system, designers implemented advanced tools for multiple view…

This paper describes the creation of an active learning environment within an Internet-based course in the School of Business, Government and Technology at Kean University (New Jersey). The introductory Management Information Systems (MIS) course is an elective that has become increasingly popular with junior and senior business majors. The main…

Through the use of comprehensive instructional design and sophisticated information technologies, the University of Michigan School of Education has reinvented the way it educates prospective mathematics teachers. A new World Wide Web-based instructional environment called SLATE (Space for Learning and Teaching Exploration) combines digital video,…

The construction of a very fast network backbone between all Scottish universities, in conjunction with the formation of a common core curriculum for Scottish medical schools teaching child health, has provided the schools with an opportunity to provide collaborative, computer assisted learning (CAL) across the World Wide Web, delivered by a…

Lifelong learning is becoming a necessity in the new Information Society where everyone, particularly small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), must keep up with new technologies. Education and training are of the most importance in this updating. An interdisciplinary and inter-university work group called "Canalejas" (Spain) has…

The 15 papers in this book on teaching students who have visual impairments and other disabilities are grouped into three parts which examine first, characteristics of students with visual impairments and other disabilities; second, the instructional process, curriculum, and methods; and, third, disability-specific curriculum. The papers are: (1)…

The Learning Engines (LE) model, developed at the University of Melbourne (Australia), supports the integration of rich learning activities into the World Wide Web. The model is concerned with the practical design, educational value, and reusability of software components. The model is focused on the academic teacher who is in the best position to…

This paper introduces a multimedia-based educational system on logistics developed at the University of Magdeburg (Germany), reports on development and implementation of the prototype, and discusses ideas for redesign. The system was tested, used, and evaluated at the university and within a European network of 24 universities, colleges, and…

Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) has been studied in Japan since about 1963. However, materials for computer-assisted English second language instruction at the college level are not highly developed. A 1985 experiment in CAI at one Japanese university used materials developed by faculty, staff, and students. Instruction using CAI at Doshisha…

With each issue focusing on different themes, volume 18 of "Inside English" looks at he revitalizing literature, teaching as a subversive activity, writing at all levels, and the English classroom of the 1990's. In addition to regular columns on the English Council of California Two-Year Colleges (ECCTYC) and legislative concerns, the following…