A behavioral systems approach to adaptive computerized instructional design

A computerized multimedia instructional system has been developed that adheres to behavioral systems principles for presenting both adaptive programmed instructional materials and laboratory simulations. This instructional software system, called MediaMatrix, is both an authoring environment and a presentation vehicle that adapts the complexity of presentations in real time to changes in a student’s current rate of progress. It incorporates an automated knowledge-generation system that tracks all interactions between the user and any instructional objects within the system. Such knowledge is used both for a research database and for an artificial-intelligence engine that constructs an estimate ofconcept association networks (Verplanck, 1992a). Such networks reflect a learner’s developing knowledge and skill base, and may be used for tutorial advising during student use.     

Filling a data gap: the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) series

Abstract

The last US government survey that collected information on religious identification was in 1957. Since then researchers have relied solely on non-governmental data sources, primarily the General Social Survey. This paper shows how the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) series has deepened understanding of religious identification in the past two decades with its large samples (113?713 in 1990, 50?280 in 2001, and 54?461 in 2008) and its unique open-ended religion question. Giving respondents a chance to name their own religion, if any, allows researchers to identify and study small religious groups, which are placed together under ‘other’ in typical national studies. By using a consistent research methodology, the ARIS surveys form a time-series that enable tracking trends. The paper describes two case studies: how the ARIS series documented the rise of the Nones and how it tracked shifts in religious identification among American Latinos.     

Use of Brief Instructional Trials to Identify Small Group Reading Strategies: A Two Experiment Study

The Instructional Hierarchy (IH) has proven useful for understanding the functional properties of empirically valid instructional strategies. Investigators have relied heavily on the IH as a heuristic in conceptualizing instructional components used in brief experimental analyses. To date, only one investigation has applied brief experimental analysis results to small group reading interventions. The purpose of this paper is to describe two studies which used single session instructional trials to identify interventions that were subsequently applied to small group reading instruction. In both studies, individualized instructional trials that probed for skill and performance deficits were carried out and results suggested that all students benefited from the instructional intervention. Next, the intervention was implemented in a small group format. In Experiment 2, however, validation of the instructional package was carried out by the classroom teacher who delivered the instructional package to the small group. In both cases, extended experimental analyses suggested that the intervention was effective at improving all participants’ generalized reading fluency. Results of both studies are discussed in terms of how future studies can refine procedures for validating instructional and motivational components before classroom applications.     

A comparison of three interventions for increasing oral reading performance: Application of the instructional hierarchy

The instructional hierarchy is a behavior-analytic model that links level of academic skill development (i.e., acquisition, fluency, generalization, adaptation) with appropriate instructional techniques. The present study used the instructional hierarchy to compare the effects of three instructional interventions (listening passage preview, subject passage preview, and taped words) on subjects' oral reading performance on word lists and passages. Subjects were 4 male students with learning disabilities who ranged in age from 8 years 10 months to 11 years 11 months. A multielement design was used to compare the effects of the three interventions to each other and to baseline. Results indicated that the listening passage preview intervention (which contained modeling, drill, and generalization components) produced the largest performance gains. The implications of these results for selecting academic interventions based on the instructional hierarchy are discussed.     

The Minnesota interactive statistical system

The Minnesota Interactive Statistical System (MISS) is reviewed as a successful application of on-line minicomputing in an instructional and research context. The MISS system is described with regard to (1) the instructional and research needs which prompted its development, (2) its programming design, (3) its operating system, (4) its computer hardware requirements, and (5) the continued innovative minicomputing development that it has inspired.     

Behavior analysis in instructional design: A functional typology of verbal tasks

This paper describes and illustrates a typology of verbal instructional tasks for advanced classroom instruction and inservice training. The typology is based upon functional definitions of elementary and conceptual behavior, and incorporates the kinds of goals and objectives that surveys and research have shown to be important for experienced learners. The typology's metastructure is B. F. Skinner's (1957) verbal behavior classification system. This paper describes Skinner's system as a context for understanding and selecting instructional tasks for experienced learners. This paper also discusses rate of response as an important dimension of proficiency or mastery, and procedures for selecting proficiency criteria of tasks in the typology are also described. Results of the first of a series of validation studies indicated that high agreement between typology designer and subjects' classification of tasks can be attained after a short training session. The typology is discussed as a vehicle for standardizing instructional research and practice, and as a basis for research on transfer of control across classes of verbal behavior. Implications for research on building fluency of adult performance, and efficiency in instructional design are also discussed.     

Improving Middle School Professional Development by Examining Middle School Teachers' Application of Literacy Strategies and Instructional Design

The goal of this article is to explore the effects of professional development on middle school teachers' understanding and application of literacy strategies supporting and enhancing instruction across the curriculum. This study investigated the extent to which reading and writing strategies, along with sound instructional design, were implemented by middle school teachers in their content areas based on data collected from self-reports (i.e., strategy and design checklists) and authors' classroom observations. Results from the analysis of the data collected suggest that the sampled middle school teachers used a wide variety of instructional strategies and instructional designs throughout their teaching. While certain instructional designs (whole-class discussion) and strategies (note-taking and graphic organizers) were used universally throughout the school, perhaps more important was the fact that others were selected dependent upon the unique content area they taught.     

Instructive feedback: Review of parameters and effects

We present a review of the existing research on instructive feedback. Instructive feedback is a method of presenting extra, non-target stimuli in the consequent events of instructional trials (e.g., during praise statements). Students are not required to respond to those additional stimuli and are not reinforced if they do. The research is reviewed in terms of the characteristics of participants involved, the settings and instructional variables used, and the findings that emerged. The findings indicate that a wide range of students by age and disability were included and that most studies occurred in special education contexts. When used with response prompting procedures in a variety of direct instructional arrangements, students acquire and maintain some of the instructive feedback stimuli. Thus, teachers are encouraged to use instructive feedback in their direct instructional activities. Areas of future research include using instructive feedback in new contexts and examining methods for presenting instructive feedback. In addition, the use of instructive feedback to influence future learning and stimulus class formation should be investigated.     

Computer-based systems for applying psychological knowledge

Computer-based systems have long been seen as a means for applying psychological knowledge to instructing. However, from many years of research and development on instructional design and on using computers for instructing, we learned that the current instructional techniques are based on an inadequate scientific knowledge base and are poorly implemented. In order to do better, improved techniques based on modern cognitive science must be developed, and computer-based aids are needed to assist their application. Furthermore, a standardization and distribution system is needed to identify effective instructional programs and make them available. This seems especially important if we hope to have broad impact on education and training.     

Rates of Specific Antecedent Instructional Practices and Differences Between Title I and non-Title I Schools

The use of effective instructional strategies is clearly emphasized in current educational reform, especially in the area of reading. The purposes of this study were to investigate the rates at which specific instructional practices (i.e., attention signals, prior knowledge supports, previews, instructor modeling, student modeling, organizational prompts) were utilized during literacy time in elementary schools, determine if there were relationships among the instructional variables, and explore if teachers in Title I schools and teachers in non-Title I schools differed in their use of specific practices. Participants included teachers and students from 35 classrooms who were each observed for 5 hours, resulting in a total of 175 observation hours. The Setting Factors Assessment Tool (SFAT) was used to measure the antecedent instructional variables. Main results included that teachers in non-Title I classrooms used significantly more prior knowledge references than teachers in Title I schools; the effect size for this finding was large. Several correlations among the instructional variables were significant. The article concludes with a discussion of the main findings, implications for future research and the limitations of this study.     

STEP—A System for Teaching Experimental Psychology using E-Prime

Students in psychology need to learn to design and analyze their own experiments. However, software that allows students to build experiments on their own has been limited in a variety of ways. The shipping of the first full release of the E-Prime system later this year will open up a new opportunity for addressing this problem. Because E-Prime promises to become the standard for building experiments in psychology, it is now possible to construct a Web-based resource that uses E-Prime as the delivery engine for a wide variety of instructional materials. This new system, funded by the National Science Foundation, is called STEP (System for the Teaching of Experimental Psychology). The goal of the STEP Project is to provide instructional materials that will facilitate the use of E-Prime in various learning contexts. We are now compiling a large set of classic experiments implemented in E-Prime and available over the Internet from http://step.psy.cmu.edu. The Web site also distributes instructional materials for building courses in experimental psychology based on E-Prime.     

Examining the Effects of Incremental Case Presentation and Forecasting Outcomes on Case-Based Ethics Instruction

Case-based reasoning has long been used to facilitate instructional effectiveness. Although much remains to be known concerning the most beneficial way to present case material, recent literature suggests that simplifying case material is favorable. Accordingly, the current study manipulated two instructional techniques, incremental case presentation and forecasting outcomes, in a training environment in an attempt to better understand the utility of simplified versus complicated case presentation for learning. Findings suggest that pairing these two cognitively demanding techniques reduces satisfaction and detracts from the effectiveness of the learning approach. Implications regarding the use of instructional techniques in training programs are discussed.     

小学教师课堂教学设计能力发展特点及影响因素

运用作品分析、调查、访谈等研究方法,对小学教师这一特殊群体进行分层随机抽样调查与研究。研究结果表明,小学教师选择与运用教学媒体、编制教学目标、分析教学对象的能力明显低于选择与运用教学方法、分析教学任务、评价教学结果的能力;学校类型、教师学历、教龄是影响小学教师教学设计能力的3个主要因素。     

TEACHING MULTIPLICATION FACTS TO STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES

Multiple baseline designs were used to examine the effects of an instructional package on accuracy of performance in solving multiplication facts by 3 students with learning disabilities. The instructional package included the following components: (a) a modified instructional sequence in which multiplication facts were grouped into the zeros, ones, doubles, fives, and nines categories, and those remaining; (b) identification of the category in which each fact belonged; (c) mnemonic strategies associated with solving facts in each category; and (d) steps to be completed for solving facts in each category. Results indicated that the instructional package produced substantial and immediate effects. After receiving instruction, a participant's accuracy was often 100%, and this was maintained throughout the evaluation even as other strategies were introduced. Comparable results occurred across students, demonstrating replication of the effects of the instructional package.     

Seeing the Problem: An Explanation From Pólya

In this article, we focus on the instructional explanation of guessing as a heuristic for solving the Five Planes Problem (FPP), given in a lesson by George Pólya. We use the analysis of the lesson to test the applicability of what is known about instructional explanations in elementary mathematics to higher mathematics. The most salient characteristic of Pólya's lesson is the profusion of models and representations used to develop a sense of the problem and to support the instructional explanation. Pólya used analogical models to transform the complex FFT to a simpler one, and he used representations to extend the perspective on the problem. Introducing such models and representations requires keeping track of the links between them and the original problem. Pólya excelled in this endeavor, and his passage to each new representation or model was generally justified in terms of the goals of the explanation. Another very important feature of an instructional explanation is problem identification, a fragile goal state that needs to be constantly maintained when the problem being explained is complex. For this lesson, we examine how Pólya established and maintained that goal. Finally, we offer some insight on instructional explanations in a situation in which the teacher needs to fulfill two goals at the same time. Here, the first goal was to teach students both how to solve FPP and how to use guessing as a problem-solving heuristic or strategy; the second goal was to show us how to teach guessing. Keeping these goals in mind, we offer some suggestions on how to teach metaskills through mathematical problems in accordance with the current understanding of constructivist approaches to learning.     

Contexts as switchmen: The variable effects of formal and informal instructional strategies on student achievement

This study presents an exploratory theoretical framework that analyzes the extent by which the contexts of classroom instruction mediate the effects of instructional strategies on achievement. The study first presents the two main tasks that teachers face in classrooms-teaching, and controlling the social order. The study then elaborates on formal and informal instructional strategies that teachers use to manage these tasks. The main foci of the study is to show that the effects of these different instructional strategies on student achievements vary by grade level. The results suggest that the contexts of instruction determine the magnitude and direction of the effects of instructional strategies on achievement. Positive effects on student achievement appear when a functional congruence occurs between teachers' instructional strategies and the contexts wherein they are used. The analyses suggest that changes in the cognitive, social, and institutional contexts of classrooms may change the relative efficacy of specific instructional strategies. Consequently, researchers should pay more attention to the changes in the sociology of classrooms during students' school careers.     

An overview of STEAMER: An advanced computer-assisted instruction system for propulsion engineering

We are building a computer-based instructional system for teaching the operation of complex physical mechanisms. The system is based intimately on the use of simulation. Our goal in this paper is to describe the system we are attempting to construct, discuss its origins, and identify what we perceive to be its implications for psychological research into instruction.     

Teaching chained skills in a non-school setting using a divided half instructional format

This investigation evaluated the use of dyadic instructional arrangements in teaching chained skills to four students with moderate mental retardation. Each instructional dyad consisted of two students. Each of the three cooking skills was divided into two equal parts, and each student in a dyad received direct instruction on one part of the task analysis during each instructional session. During the following session, the two parts were reversed and a student received instruction on the second part. A constant time delay procedure was used to teach the targeted skills in an off-campus setting. A multiple probe design across skills and replicated across students evaluated the effectiveness of the instructional procedure and teaching arrangement. Results indicate that each of the four students learned the three cooking skills. Implications for future research are discussed.