Many medical schools offer pre-professional programs to undergraduate students. The main purpose of the university pre-professional program (UPPP) is to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills required to successfully cope with the academic demands of further education provided by professional colleges. The aim of this commentary…

In this regular feature of "Educational Technology," Michael F. Shaughnessy and Susan M. Fulgham present their interview with Ryan Watkins, Associate Professor of Educational Technology at the George Washington University and the author of 10 books and more than 95 articles. In this interview, Watkins discusses the following topics:…

The concurrent improvement in average grades earned by college graduates would seem to indicate better quality students, although some observers attribute that to grade inflation. From the author's perspective derived from almost four decades of teaching at one institution, students are intellectually as good as ever; however, the author sees a…

A literature review analyzed training designs in four professional development approaches: case study, goal-based scenario, problem-based learning, and action learning. Case study and scenario tended to foster single-loop learning and solution of well-structured problems; problem-based and action learning fostered double-loop learning and…

Moving problem-centered, experiential programs into the mainstream of graduate and professional education will require more formal mechanisms for leadership. Students of graduate education programs that infuse the disciplinary study of academe with the applied perspective of professional practice gain broader contact with the problems of the…

The president of the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) discusses the current state of environmental education and suggests several key issues to address when designing programs: (1) the basis of the program must be sound, unbiased science; (2) critical thinking must be at the core of the learning experience to make it effective and…

Research on how the brain works has resulted in wider-scale adoption of the principles of problem-based learning (PBL) in many areas of education, including technology education. The PBL approach is attractive to curriculum developers because it is based on interdisciplinary learning, results in multiple outcomes, is integrated and…