Whether or not "instruction" appears in their job titles, librarians are often in the position of educating their users, colleagues, and peers to successfully locate and evaluate information. Because MLIS education tends to offer less-than-comprehensive preparation in pedagogy and instructional design, this much-needed book tackles the challenge…

A theoretical model for planning single-event nutrition education contrasts a Practical, Foods, and Positive (PFP) emphasis to an Abstract, Nutrient, and Negative (ANN) focus on nutrition topics. Use of this model makes messages more appealing to consumers and may increase the likelihood that people will apply the nutrition information in their…

Academic institutions as well as professional organizations are faced with providing their constituents with the knowledge and tools that will enable them to interact with people of other cultures--to be global citizens in both their personal and professional lives. The foreign language profession developed a paradigm that has been effectively…

The author describes a research methodology for college course improvement, and applies the results to education courses. In Japan, it is usually difficult to carry out research on college course improvement, because faculty cannot introduce experimental design approaches based on control and treatment groupings of students in actual classroom…

Examples are often an integral part of online learning environments directed at the acquisition of problem-solving skills. An unresolved issue, however, is when examples should be provided to learners. Prior research has suggested that example-problem pairs are more effective than problem-example pairs for novice learners. However, in those…

This qualitative study investigated a situated learning environment implemented in an educational technology course where pre-service teachers worked collaboratively on meaningful real-world projects, assuming the role of professional teachers. With a traditional learning environment as a critical frame of reference, we found that the students in…

In this article, we present a dynamic systems approach to instructional systems design (ISD). The fourth generation of ISD represents the attempt to establish a system that can adapt to individual learning and performance problems/needs while also being able to continuously update itself. It is learning-theory-neutral and takes into account the…

It is argued in this article that the human body both in health and disease cannot be fully understood without adequately accounting for the different levels of human variation. The article focuses on variation due to ancestry, arguing that the inclusion of information pertaining to ancestry in human anatomy teaching materials and courses should…

In this essay I elaborate on three ideas that emerged from reading the work of Sylvie Barma. These points are in response to curriculum reform and the use of activity theory: (a) curriculum reform as a public policy; (b) a reflection about the process followed by teacher implementation of that reform in a biology classroom; and (c) the sense of…

Teaching learners how to comprehend text remains a largely unsuccessful attempt in our school system. Drawing from the fields of learning sciences, education, instructional design, and performance improvement, we designed, tested, revised, and released to schools and homes an interactive online program that reliably teaches flexible, widely…

There was a doughnut thief loose and the students were determined to put their science skills to use to track down the culprit. They would use forensic science to eliminate suspects and identify the thief who stole the doughnuts. School staff take on the role of the likely suspects. It was their goal to develop an interdisciplinary unit that…

This activity presents an option for covering biology content while engaging students in an investigation that highlights the spirit of Halloween. Students are engaged in the story line and have fun trying to solve the mystery kidnapping by using science skills to examine the evidence and eliminate some ghoulish suspects. (Contains 1 figure.)

A transformative learning experience (TLE) is an especially meaningful encounter that leaves a lasting impact on a person's sense of competence or place in the world. The construct of TLE is presented in transactional terms as an irreducible interplay between learner and the world (including the natural world, artifacts, and other people).…

This paper describes a collaborative educational data mining tool based on association rule mining for the ongoing improvement of e-learning courses and allowing teachers with similar course profiles to share and score the discovered information. The mining tool is oriented to be used by non-expert instructors in data mining so its internal…

With a background in the teaching of Spanish in the US and the teaching of English abroad, the authors had spent a great deal of time contemplating both linguistic diversity and the internationalization of college campuses. Considering that we found ourselves studying TESOL and had an opportunity to design our own English language course for…