Problems in the measurement of gain in adult literacy programs were investigated through repeated testing of a group of students in adult basic education and General Educational Development classes and through computer simulations. Ninety-two students were tested at 3 different times over 7 months with a battery of norm-referenced reading and…

This paper contains the results of a study on the importance of discovery learning using computer simulations. The purpose of the study was to identify what constitutes discovery learning and to assess the effects of instructional support measures. College students were observed working with an assignment and a computer simulation in the domain of…

The field of instructional technology is characterized by its products, such as instructional media, and its processes, such as instructional design. The process of instructional technology has been shaped by advances in learning and instructional theory over the past 50 years. Much of the development work of the field to date has been on direct…

Whether item response theory (IRT) is useful to the small-scale testing practitioner is examined. The stability of IRT item parameters is evaluated with respect to the classical item parameters (i.e., p-values, biserials) obtained from the same data set. Previous research investigating the effect of sample size on IRT parameter estimation has…

The graded response model for two-stage testing was applied to an attitudes toward science scale using real-data simulation. The 48-item scale was administered to 920 students at a grade-8 equivalent in Singapore. A two-stage 16-item computerized adaptive test was developed. In two-stage testing an initial, or routing, test is followed by a…

As drill and practice programs in computer assisted instruction (CAI) in English give students a chance to test their understanding and free the teacher from test grading, they seem a legitimate if unexciting use of the computer; but what seems less defensible is that, according to some estimates, 90% of available CAI software is of this drill and…

Advantages of using the microcomputer as an interactive electronic blackboard are discussed, and programs and programming techniques are described to illustrate the construction, design, storage, and modification of colorful and animated graphic displays. The methods described are based on use of an Atari 800 microcomputer but could be used on…

This supplement updates the first supplement to the original catalog of available PLATO systems instructional materials. The original catalog was published in April 1980 and the first supplement in November 1981. The lessons described in the current publication have been used in actual instructional situations or have had adequate testing to…

A 2-phase project in which fifth grade students create their own country is described. The project offers a strategy for teaching a comprehensive, interdisciplinary unit on economics. In the first phase, students and teacher create an imaginary country. Separate sections outline the teaching procedure involved in this phase: locating the country;…

One of a series of units introducing secondary school students to business issues, this packet focuses on the television industry and its social and political influence. A teacher's guide and student materials are provided in two separate sections. Following an overview of objectives and activities, the teacher's guide outlines five daily lessons.…

Teaching United States History is the topic of this annotated bibliography. The following kinds and amounts of materials are cited: (1) 9 citations from "Resources in Education" (RIE); (2) 10 citations from "Current Index to Journals in Education" (CIJE); (3) 48 commercially available "Student and Teacher Materials"…

Teaching civics, political science, and government at all levels is the topic of this annotated bibliography. The following kinds and amounts of materials are cited: (1) 8 citations from "Resources in Education" (RIE); (2) 9 citations from "Current Index to Journals in Education" (CIJE); (3) 42 commercially available…

Six tips for increasing student problem-solving skills are offered in this teacher fact sheet. Puzzles and simulations matched to student mental maturity and general knowledge are recommended as activities for helping students think more flexibly and practice higher order thinking skills. In addition, four suggestions are given for controlling…

For decades, every chemical engineer has been asked to have a background in separations. The required separations course can, however, be uninspiring and superficial because understanding many separation processes involves conventional graphical methods and commercial process simulators. We utilize simple, user-­friendly mathematical software,…

This paper illustrates the transformation of a raw data matrix into a matrix of associations, and then into a factor matrix. Factor analysis attempts to distill the most important relationships among a set of variables, thereby permitting some theoretical simplification. In this heuristic data, a correlation matrix was derived to display…