This investigation examined the effects of authentic Francophone web sites on cultural learning at the intermediate level. Fifty-four students "surfed" eight web sites. A pre-posttest design assessed long-term gains in culture and the learning of practices, products, and perspectives from exposure to a curriculum with Internet activities. Eight…

This study examined the effects of an advance organizer and background experience in science on the attainment of science concepts. Ninth-grade earth science students (N=90) were given the Dubbins Earth Science Test (DEST) and a Science Background Experience Inventory (SBEI) developed by the author. They were then placed into high, medium, and low…

An earlier study found virtually no relationship between college students' reported studying practices and various tests of reading comprehension, so a second study investigated whether different results would be obtained with an instrument based on study strategies college students actually reported using. Scores on this instrument were to be…

A research project was designed 1) to compare student-controlled to program-controlled computer-assisted instruction (CAI); and 2) to evaluate the effect of reading a lesson narrative before training. A 2x2 design was used to investigate the influence of the two pretraining and two training conditions on performance scores and training time.…

This study was an action research project designed to improve students' reading comprehension. Students in the targeted kindergarten, second, and third grade classes exhibited a lack of reading comprehension, which interfered with their academic achievement. Data was collected by student and parent surveys, observations, and document analysis.…

This study of 20 sixth- and seventh-grade students with learning disabilities receiving social studies instruction found that prelesson learning set activities (including interactive review of previous instruction, statements of lesson objectives and expectations, and discussion of the lesson's importance) resulted in significantly better…

This study examined whether graphic organizer instruction would facilitate comprehension, recall, and information transfer, and how much explicit instruction was necessary for independent generation of graphic organizers. Fifth graders read social studies information with or without graphic organizers and explicit instruction. Explicitness and…

Describes a study of undergraduates that was conducted to determine the impact of advance organizers on students' achievement in computer-assisted video instruction (CAVI). Treatments of the experimental and control groups are explained, and results indicate that advance organizers do not facilitate near-transfer of rule-learning in CAVI.…

The effects of orienting activities and practice on performance and student behaviors in a cooperative learning environment were studied with 80 graduate education majors in an educational psychology course. A 2 x 2 factorial design was used, with orienting activity (advance organizer versus objectives) and type of practice (verbal information…

Two studies were conducted to compare the advance organizer and concept elaboration models of instruction with a task analysis approach. It was hypothesized that the concept elaboration group would achieve significantly higher than either the advance organizer group or the task analysis group on concept learning and principle learning. A pilot…

The Information Mapping technique was used to present a learning packet, and its usefulness in helping right-brain cerebrally dominant students to achieve the same level of subject mastery as their left-brain counterparts was examined. Reading level, grade point average, and gender were also analyzed. Torrance's "Your Style of Learning and…

This handbook is intended to be a self-study guide to the effective use of nine specific instructional strategies proven to improve student achievement. The strategies are: (1) identifying similarities and differences (comparing, classifying, creating metaphors, and creating analogies); (2) summarizing and note taking; (3) reinforcing effort and…

Discussion of the effectiveness of combining instructional strategies to produce methods of group instruction that are as effective as tutoring focuses on a study of undergraduates that assessed the cognitive, affective, and sociometric outcomes of an instructional system combining cooperative learning, enhanced student participation, and advance…

The National Science Foundation funded a project to: (1) identify major areas of science education research in which sufficient studies have been conducted to permit useful generalizations for educational practice; (2) conduct meta-analyses of each of these areas; and (3) prepare a compendium of these meta-analyses along with interpretative and…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 19 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the relationship of perceptual training and reading achievement; (2) compensatory education for community college students; (3) comparative analysis of…