Self-directed learning is a core theoretical construct of adult learning. Importantly, self-directed learning represents a fundamental meta-competence for living and working in our increasingly complex and unpredictable world. Nonetheless, the construct of self-directed learning has become obfuscated. In order to redress this concern, this…

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic brought about several challenges in both learning and instructive styles. Chief among these was engagement in classrooms that were remote, in-person or switched between the two due to quarantine periods. In a content centric biomaterials core course, here we describe an 'inclusive engagement toolkit' that combines…

Many teachers develop oral communication skills through questioning, discussion, Socratic seminars, think-pair-shares, jigsaws, and small-group projects. To these activities the author has added poetry under the auspices of Poetry Out Loud, a national program that asks students to memorize and recite poems. On its website (www.poetryoutloud.org/),…

In a typical chemistry instrumentation laboratory, students learn analytical techniques through a well-developed procedure. Such an approach, however, does not engage students in a creative endeavor. To foster the intrinsic motivation of students' desire to learn, improve their confidence in self-directed learning activities and enhance their…

Laboratory-based practical exercises, which are an important and time-consuming part of many science degree courses, may be directed towards a variety of learning objectives. Some of these have traditionally been assessed by staff marking the student's written account of the laboratory experiment (the laboratory write-up) but increasing student…

Discusses self-instructional programs on library use in large academic libraries and recommends including opportunities for face-to-face interaction with subject specialist librarians. Topics include behavioral objectives; experiences at Brigham Young University; the use of Web sites; distance learning; electronic classrooms; and theories of…

The Guided Independent Study Program, an individually paced, master-oriented teaching method for serving undergraduate and graduate nontraditional students at the College of St. Scholastica, Minnesota, is described. A number of independent study courses in psychology, gerontology, and education have been offered to students who cannot come to the…

The question of whether educational technology can be of assistance to the public school teacher who is in the position of having to teach the rudiments of a second language that he himself has not mastered is addresed in this paper. A series of teaching and learning units were constructed and experimented with for two years in teaching English as…

Ten articles on continuing professional education are presented. Titles and authors are as follows: "Merging Continuing Education and Inservice Teacher Education: A Concept Worth Exploring" (Alvah M. Kilgore); "Ablative Absolute Continuing Education, Ignorance Flees" (Ben J. Wiens); "Humanize! Individualize! Personalize!…

These volumes describe and contain products of Project GENTEC, which identified and defined 29 generic technical (GENTEC) competencies. (A GENTEC competency is an idea or structure of ideas that contributes to the production and/or distribution of goods and/or services and that involves worker behaviors, including critical thinking, emotions, and…