Briefly discusses current views of the way anxiety decreases students' learning from instructional software and describes ways software designers might compensate for the learning problems of anxious students. (MBR)

Reconstructing media research so that generalizable knowledge can be produced requires an increased emphasis on attributes of media which interact with individual differences to effect learning. In order to accomplish this, media researchers must make a distinction between research "with" media and research "on" media. Privious efforts to…

Explores assumptions about student ability that underlie current instructional software design and the possibility that a behaviorist bias influences software design strategies; offers evidence that a behaviorist instructional strategy helps low-ability and hinders high-ability students; presents a contrasting instructional approach; and reviews…

Discussion of research problems in instructional technology emphasizes two main needs: (1) development of a prescriptive research methodology; and (2) more front end analysis that produces a distinction between instructional design research and instructional development research. Two examples of research using the prescriptive technology approach…

This critical examination of the assumption that computer-based instruction enhances student learning and performance over traditional means summarizes arguments from past and present analyses of research, examines media attributes or symbol system theories, and presents evidence that much research is susceptible to rival hypotheses. (MBR)

Presents evidence to establish that instructional technology applications often result in transfer of training failures, which are attributed to inappropriate mixing of behaviorist and cognitive instructional design models. Specific suggestions are made for instructional design prescriptions that support different levels of transfer for different…

This is the most recent in a series of retrospective bibliographies on television and children. It includes an annotated listing of research reviews, position papers, and planning documents entered in the ERIC system in the years 1974-1977. Over 100 documents are listed in 14 categories: helping children to learn from television, new experimental…

Reviews current research on different learning styles and capabilities of experts and novices which may guide software design: memory, cognitive processing, and performance differences; automatization, and coping strategies. Procedures which may enhance expert and novice performance when built into software are outlined. (MBR)

Computer-based instruction (CBI) studies analyzed by Kulik et al. were examined to explore the validity of competing claims about the computer's contribution to measured achievement gains. Results suggest achievement gains found in CBI studies are overestimated and are due to uncontrolled but robust instructional methods embedded in CBI…

In the first of four symposium papers, Clark reviews the research on learning from media and uses his argument that media comparison studies show no differences in learning attributable to any one medium over another to dispute recent research on computer-assisted instruction. He also takes the position that the media attribute argument (i.e.,…

Reviews cognitive research related to computer-based instruction in the areas of motivation; the relationship between computer-assisted instruction and learning; learner control; transfer of learning; hemispheric dominance; and anxiety. Design professionals are urged to consider congitive views. (MBR)

Instructional research is reviewed where teaching failures have produced students who seem to be less able to use learning skills or had less access to knowledge in some domain than before they were taught. Three general types of "mathemathantic" (i.e. where instruction "kills" learning) effects are hypothesized, theoretical…