Lab-centric instruction emphasizes supervised, hands-on activities by substituting lab for lecture time. It combines a multitude of pedagogical techniques into the format of an extended, structured closed lab. We discuss the range of benefits for students, including increased staff interaction, frequent and varied self-assessments, integrated…

The Personalised System of Instruction is a form of mastery learning which, though it has been proven to be educationally effective, has never seriously challenged the dominant lecture-tutorial teaching method in higher education and has largely fallen into disuse. An information and communications technology assisted version of the Personalised…

Analysis of a series of computer science seminars indicates that use of the discourse marker "so" in dialogic talk is not random, rather it plays an important role in orienting the listener to the overall structure of the seminar. Analysis shows how the discourse marker occurs in specific environments, with specific prosodic features, and that its…

College mathematics and computer science students in two math courses (conventional lecture-based, and a multimedia variant of the Personalized System of Instruction) completed the Approaches to Studying Inventory. Students in the latter course obtained higher scores on meaning orientation. The effect was significant in computer-science students,…

A collection of essays address a variety of issues in listening in the academic context, particularly in a foreign or second language. Articles include: "Research of Relevance to Second Language Lecture Comprehension--An Overview" (John Flowerdew); "Expectation-Driven Understanding in Information Systems Lecture Comprehension" (Steve Tauroza,…