This practicum was designed to increase collaboration between special education resource room teachers and regular elementary education classroom teachers. Procedures were developed to ensure that students with learning disabilities (LD) who were placed in regular classes received appropriate instructional and assessment modifications. Training in…

This study examined influences upon experienced teachers' course planning. Seven teachers were each intensively interviewed four times about their planning for courses they had never before taught; the interviews took place before, after, and twice during the semester of the "new" course in question. Findings were classified into three categories…

The components of existing district instructional information systems are identified and illustrated by examples from field studies and descriptions of work with two districts in defining their instructional information systems and assigning costs. Instructional information systems are loosely organized methods of providing past and present…

If one assumes that the purpose of education is to change student behavior as a result of some definite course of instruction, then an objective of educational research should be to determine what procedures or techniques best produce the desired behavioral changes. If a course has been effective, then there could be a large number of components…

Continued advances in computerized training technology allow for a better link between instruction and evaluation. The use of computer-controlled audio and video feedback takes the automation of a mastery learning approach with its frequent shifts between instruction and testing a step further and begins to blur the distinction between training…

A 17-week professional experience program was undertaken to enable a college professor to: (1) attend and present a paper at the 14th World Conference of the International Council for Distance Education (ICDE) in Oslo, Norway, in December 1988; (2) gain first hand information about innovations in the use of telecommunications in the delivery of…

Science faculty at small community colleges often face the problem of teaching courses at off-campus locations without laboratory facilities or equipment. An introductory physical science course offered at Southampton Correctional Center in Capron, Virginia, illustrates one approach to this problem. First, the instructor met with students prior to…

Noting the increased use of microcomputers in commerce and the accounting profession, the Department of Accounting and Finance at the University of Manchester recognized the importance of integrating microcomputers into the accounting curriculum and requested and received a grant to develop an integrated study environment in which students would…

Defining a telecourse as a series of lessons presented through the medium of television, this paper outlines four uses of telecourses and describes three different options for telecourse design: (1) use of commercially-available materials; (2) use of professor-developed materials; and (3) a combination of the two. Focusing on the…

This discussion of the value given to teaching in higher education offers research-based insights on how institutions can make a stronger commitment to teaching. Recognizing that change initiatives must be planned and made on a number of fronts, examples and illustrations of how improvements may be made in a variety of areas are presented. The…

In 1984, the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Wilson Learning Corporation created the Alliance for Learning to support a variety of research projects focused on developing new areas of knowledge about adult learning and new technologies for delivering training and education. This paper describes an Alliance project exploring the…

This overview of the issues involved in introducing educational computing into a school system at either the district, building, or classroom level begins by defining the terms "educational computing" and "computer literacy." A discussion of the curriculum development process focuses on the role of educational technologies in…

When new educational technology is put into actual use, new ways of using the technology and new ways of organizing instruction can emerge. A critical feature of formative research conducted in actual settings is that the organization of instruction can change as the educational environment appropriates the technology to its own goals. Thus, the…

This report illustrates one way in which the technologies of testing might combine with cognitive science techniques to help steer instruction. Steering testing is brief diagnostic testing that steers, or individualizes, the course of instruction. Steering testing uses simple heuristics for reasoning about the level of a student's competence in a…

This learning module, which is intended for use in in-service training for vocational rehabilitation counselors, deals with writing a task analysis. Step-by-step guidelines are provided for breaking down a task into small teachable steps by analyzing the task in terms of the way in which it will be performed once learned (method), the steps to be…