Design Of Instructional Materials Research Articles

Changing preschool teacher candidates’ perceptions about technology integration in a TPACK-based material design course

Abstract This qualitative case study investigates how preschool teacher candidates’ perceptions about technology integration change during the technology-rich Material Design course that was based on the technology-pedagogical-content knowledge (TPACK) framework. Twelve preschool teacher candidates, enrolled in an Instructional Technology and Material Design course, participated in the study. Firstly, focus-group interviews were conducted and an open-ended questionnaire was administered. The results showed that the reasons of the preschool teacher candidates’ negative perceptions about technology integration pertained to their not knowing how to use technology and finding technology unnecessary to use in preschool teaching practice. Secondly, four activities based on TPACK were designed to provide preschool teacher candidates specific experience on technology use and show preschool technology use examples with the purpose of changing these negative beliefs. Data were gathered through journals, assignments...

The Effect of Multiple Texts on the Inquiry of Big Questions in the Affective Domain

The purpose of the present study was to explore how junior high students could benefit from reading multiple texts on the inquiry of big questions concerning adolescent developmental issues. Thirtyseven 8 th grade junior high students were recruited to participate in this project. Questionnaires were first adopted to investigate their types of interests on big questions, their reading attitude, and their preferences about outside readings. Then an action research followed to develop a literature-based program to promote their growth on big ideas. It is hoped that by depicting a clearer relation between multiple texts and the attainment of big ideas, this study would have implications for theories of reading comprehension using multiple texts, and for the future design and choice of feasible instructional materials in affective education.

Kanji City An Exploration of Hypermedia Applications for CALL

Kanji City explores some of the possibilities for design of language instructional materials in hypermedia format. It takes advantage of HyperCard's potential to integrate text with digitized and synthesized sound, interactive graphics and animation. Furthermore, the application demonstrates how hypermedia can support inductive learning through trial-and-error exploration of a simulation of real-life environment, and promote contextualization of language and language use. Kanji City serves as an umbrella for a host of related language learning programs. Several of these modules exemplify the concept of presentation shells that are not restricted to teaching Japanese, but can be filled with contents from a wide range of subjects.

FEN BİLGİSİ ÖĞRETMENLİĞİ ÖĞRENCİLERİNİN MATERYAL TASARIMINDA YARATICILIKLARININ DEĞERLENDİRİLMESİ

Training individuals with creative thinking skills is one of the most important tasks for all teachers. However, teachers' qualifications in this field are unknown. The purpose of this study is to evaluate 3th class Science Education students studying in Instructional Technologies and Material Design course within the scope of creativity in the process and at the end of preparing instructional material in Education Faculty, Adiyaman University In this study, case study which one of the qualitative research methods used in order to in-depth analyze the situation. The research showed that the instructional material design process and instructional material as a product requires creativity. In addition feedbacks about developed instructional materials showed that they are new, original and different. It is believed that during instructional material development process, students' showed serious activities about creative thinking.

A Question of Accessibility: Understanding Lay Users Of Medical Devices

<i>A Question of Accessibility:</i> Understanding Lay Users Of Medical Devices

Towards Primary School Physics Teaching and Learning: Design Research Approach

This thesis describes a project to design a primary school physics learning environment which takes into account teachers’ needs, design procedures, properties of the learnig environment, and pupil learning outcomes. The project’s design team has wide experience in research and development work in relation to science education, the use of ICT in education, the way students think about physics, curriculum and teaching method development, and the design of instructional materials. This knowledge base was the starting point for design. The project engaged in design research. Design research is here considered to be a form of educational research, and offers opportunities to study unique educational phenomena. It produces artefacts to be applied directly in an educational setting, and thereby engages the researcher in the direct improvement of educational practice. Design research can even offer a strategy for the development and refinement of educational theory. The first main research result was a design procedure. The procedure contained four phases: 1) needs assessment; 2) definition of the objectives for a design solution; 3) design and production of the material; and 4) evaluation of the material. The phases apply research literature and empirical research. Phases three and four are iterative and include three stages: limited use of the prototype, a pilot test and a field test. The second main result was a designed learning environment as an example of a learning environment. The research showed that an environment should be: 1) concrete and illustrative, offering examples for the classroom; 2) mentally stimulating, for both study and practical work; 3) physically and pedagogically meaningful 4) usable; 5) offer peer and expert support for teachers. In addition, the research uncovered many contextual features that are important concerning the usability of the learning environment. The third main result was that qualitative level models delivered by way of stories offer much potential for learning primary school physics. From the Finnish perspective, the designed learning environment offers a novel phenomenon to investigate primary physics teaching and learning in a new situation where, from the point of view of this research, rather ambitious new National Framework Curriculum for physics education has been introduced.

Effects of multimedia characteristics on novice CAD learners’ practice performance

Based on the assumption that providing information using multiple modalities improves learners' performance, the teaching of computer-aided design (CAD) in the built environment is increasingly shifting from printed material to a multimedia approach. Yet, the evidence base suggests that presenting information by using multiple modalities does not always enhance learning. This paper reports on an empirically based study that sought to determine under which conditions architectural engineering students benefit most from multimedia CAD learning. It investigated the effects of multimedia on novice CAD learners' practice performance (time and accuracy). One hundred and one students were randomly assigned to four groups to undertake specific CAD learning tasks, with different treatments; media mode (printed-text vs. audio) and the visual mode (static-illustration vs. animation). The results indicated that the audio mode shortened learning time much more than the text mode. Conversely, the text mode enhanced CAD design accuracy, in comparison with the audio mode with the illustration mode alone. In addition, the animation mode improved design accuracy with text and audio significantly more than with illustration visual mode. The animation mode increased the learning time considerably with the text mode. The implications of the design of CAD instructional materials for architectural engineering education are examined.

The Effect of Lexical Bundles on Iranian EFL Learners Linguistic Production Fluency

The present study attempted to investigate the effects of lexical bundles on Iranian EFL learners’ paragraph writing production fluency. To achieve this purpose, an English language proficiency test was administered to 120 language learners studying TEFL at Islamic Azad University of Dehloran. Ultimately, 90 language learners were selected and randomly divided into two groups of control and experimental groups, based on their proficiency testscores.Both experimental and control groups worked on the same text- book content. The experimental group subjects were instructed on the lexical bundles use extracted from True to Life text- book, while the control group received placebo treatment during the course. The treatment took a whole academic semester. The results of the post-test showed that lexical bundles teaching methodology proved effective and influential in developing Iranian EFL language learners’ paragraph writing fluency. So, Developing English language skills, here writing skill in general and paragraph writing in particular, also, needs appropriate methods of which lexical bundles teaching methodology can be named.Since, lexical bundles use during instructional courses, help language learners have an automatic and easy recall of them in the process of paragraph writing, lexical bundles teaching methodology should be applied to having a better understanding of the text- books materials and to develop language skills. Therefore, the study suggests that content developers should include lexical bundles teaching methodology and their uses in the teaching and learning processes. The findings of this study gave empirical support to this view. Hence, this is pedagogically central in the domain of language teaching and learning and should be taken into account in the design and production of suitable instructional materials and in the methodology of classroom teaching and students learning behavior. To sum up, these findings can have a number of implications for material designers, language teachers, and students who are engaged in the teaching of English language as a foreign language.

Instructional Design and the Importance of Instructional Alignment

This paper highlights the instructional design process followed by the Maricopa Community College faculty in the creation of instructional modules in Digital Visual Literacy. The paper categorizes 10 tasks that an instructional designer, a teacher, or a trainer performs during the design phase of the instructional design process. The importance of alignment between each of these 10 instructional elements is stressed in the paper. Also described are two different design models (top-down model and the matrix model) that were used by the faculty in the design of instructional materials. The matrix model has been found to be more effective in aligning the 10 instructional elements. Also included are survey results on the importance of the instructional design elements and if instructors include these elements in their lesson design in a community college setting.

Learning about locomotion patterns from visualizations: Effects of presentation format and realism

The rapid development of computer graphics technology has made possible an easy integration of dynamic visualizations into computer-based learning environments. This study examines the relative effectiveness of dynamic visualizations, compared either to sequentially or simultaneously presented static visualizations. Moreover, the degree of realism in the visualizations was manipulated experimentally. One hundred-and-twenty university students were randomly assigned to one of six conditions (3 x 2; between-subjects; presentation format x realism). Learners' visuo-spatial abilities were considered as a continuous moderator for the presentation format. Learning outcomes were measured by a pictorial locomotion pattern classification test. Dynamic conditions outperformed static-sequential ones, but not static-simultaneous conditions, in classification performance. Realism had no main effect and did not interact with the presentation format as expected. Learners' visuo-spatial abilities had a positive effect on learning outcomes, but did not moderate the effects of the presentation format. Implications of the results for the design of instructional materials are discussed.

Improving the Science Process Skills Ability of Science Student Teachers Using I Diagrams

This study was carried out to identify the level of Science and Technology student teachers’ science process skills and to determine how efficient I diagrams are in developing these skills. The corpus of the study was consisted of 40 science and technology student teachers who were having Instructional Technologies and Material Design course during the 2009-10 academic years at Amasya University, Faculty of Education. The study was conducted as a basic experimental design. A science process skills test was applied on the student teachers as pre-test and post-test, then the points they got from each test were compared. During the study, the student teachers developed I-diagrams on science topics with the guidance of their supervisors. The resultsrevealed that the student teachers had problems with the pre-tests, and especially with the integrated process skill. At the end of the study it was observed that the student teachers’ skills on developing I-diagrams were increased as well as their integrated process skills problems were disappeared. Accordingly, it was concluded that I-diagrams were important for the acquisition and development of science process skills.

Cognitive effectiveness of visual instructional design languages

The introduction of learning technologies into education is making the design of courses and instructional materials an increasingly complex task. Instructional design languages are identified as conceptual tools for achieving more standardized and, at the same time, more creative design solutions, as well as enhancing communication and transparency in the design process. In this article we discuss differences in cognitive aspects of three visual instructional design languages (E 2ML, PoEML, coUML), based on user evaluation. Cognitive aspects are of relevance for learning a design language, creating models with it, and understanding models created using it. The findings should enable language constructors to improve the usability of visual instructional design languages in the future. The paper concludes with directions with regard to how future research on visual instructional design languages could strengthen their value and enhance their actual use by educators and designers by synthesizing existing efforts into a unified modeling approach for VIDLs.

Toward a Taxonomy of Written Errors: Investigation Into the Written Errors of Hong Kong Cantonese ESL Learners

This article examines common lexicogrammatical problems found in Cantonese English as a second language (ESL) learners' written English output. A study was conducted with 387 student participants, who were asked to do two untutored and unaided free‐writing tasks of about 200–300 words each. A range of lexicogrammatical error types commonly found among Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners was identified. Errors from the lexical level included vocabulary compensation and inaccurate directionality; errors from the syntactic level included calquing, existential structures, incorrect ordering of adverbials, and independent clauses as subjects; and those from the discourse level included periphrastic‐topic constructions. Mothertongue influence was inevitably an important source of the problems, but inadequate mastery of correct usage of the target language and universal processes were also important factors. The results of the study have potential for enhancing our understanding of the interlanguage grammar of learners and the nature, sources, and prevalence of learner problems. The results also have promising pedagogical implications, as they inform teachers of the levels, nature, sources, prevalence, and gravity of learner errors and equip them with the key ingredients needed for the design of appropriate remedial instructional materials. A discussion of how the taxonomical classification would be useful for language teachers is also given.

Evaluation of the views of pre-service teachers taught with Moodle during the course named “instructional technology and material design” on the use of teaching materials

In this study, views of pre-service teachers on whether Moodle can be utilized during the course named Instructional Technology and Material Design were investigated. Participants in the study were of 196 students in total from Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Turkish Language and Philosophy departments. During the teaching period, teachingoriented course materials, which were suitable in terms of their field of study and developed in Moodle environment, were utilized weekly during the sessions of Instructional Technology and Material Design. After a period of one semester teaching, student view scale which was developed by the researcher was administered. The data were analyzed using t-test and Anova. According to the findings, it was concluded that the materials developed using Moodle can be used in the flow of Instructional Technology and Material Design.

Instructional interactive whiteboard materials: Designers’ perspectives

The purpose of this research is to examine the design and development process of instructional materials that can be used through interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in terms of three critical aspects – software selection, IWB features, and teaching methods and techniques. For this study in which 80 instructional designer candidates participated, a number of Interactive Whiteboard Materials (IWB-Ms) were designed for a variety of disciplines including mathematics, medicine, engineering, social studies, and music by groups of designers. At the end of five-week design process, participants were given a questionnaire consisted of openended questions regarding their IWB-M design. The qualitative data were examined in terms of software and tools that were utilized, supported IWB features, and instructional methods and techniques that would be employed along with the IWB-Ms’ use.

The Effects of Lesson Screen Background Color on Declarative and Structural Knowledge

This experimental investigation replicates previous investigations of the effects of left margin screen background color hue to signal lesson sections on declarative knowledge and extends those investigations by adding a measure of structural knowledge. Participants ( N = 80) were randomly assigned to receive 1 of 4 computer-based lesson treatments that consisted of color or no color lessons crossed with color or no color structural knowledge and declarative knowledge posttests. A disordinal interaction was observed, lesson color had a significant positive effect on the structural knowledge posttest (effect size d = 0.41) but had a non-significant effect on the declarative knowledge posttest ( d = –0.17). A memory context effect was not observed. Designers of screen-based instructional materials should consider the commonsense notion that screen background color hues that signal lesson sections will tend to more strongly overlay the lesson organization onto the learner's memory organization.

The effects of blended learning environment on the critical thinking skills of students

The aim of educational system which changes according to the enhancements in educational technology is to make students more active in the learning process, as well as make them as people who have skills such as critical thinking, problem solving etc. Critical thinking is a thinking skill which consists of mental processes of discernment, analysis and evaluation. Blended Learning is learning which combines online and face-to-face approaches. By means of online discussion forms, teachers can monitor the class discussions. These discussions help teachers identify topics that need clarification or that have captured the interest of students, and they can use the insights gained by them to structure class time. Also, if teacher use the Web discussion area to address some of the more straightforward student questions, they can make better use of class time. In this sense, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of blended learning environment which supports the course management system on the critical thinking skills of students. The model of the study is pre-test, post-test single group model. There are 44 Students who attending the course of Design And Use Of Instructional Material in the Department of Computer and Instructional Technology Education of Ankara University in third grade who constitute the study group. In this study, Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal Test, which consists of 100 items, was used to collect data. This test is composed of a series of test exercises in which the application of the important abilities in the critical thinking is involved. This test includes five sub-tests which are listed as; Inference, Recognition of Assumption, Deduction, Interpretation, Evaluation of Arguments. The test was developed in 1964 by Googwin Watson ve Edward M. Glaser. The test was translated into Turkish by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nükhet Çıkrıkçı – Demirtaşlı in 1996. Analysis results indicated that the range of internal consistency of the subscales are interval from .20 to .47 and the total correlation coefficient is .63. The course consists of 5 weeks throughout the semester. At the beginning of the semester, student’ WGCTA scores were obtained. In the environment of blended learning, the course is supported to chat rooms and forums. After 5 weeks, students were asked to do the test again and the critical skills of the students were examined. The data was analyzed through paired sample t-test to compare the results of pre-test post-test scores, as well as descriptive statistics. There was no significant difference between pre-tets and post-test results.

Educational Technology and College Librarianship

ABSTRACT The fields of educational technology and librarianship interact in many significant areas: information literacy, distance learning, the design and management of instructional materials, etc. Given the congruence of concerns between the two disciplines, it is illustrative to relate the historical development of the definition of educational technology to librarianship. This article surveys briefly the development of the definition of educational technology and the relationship of college librarianship to these developments. Finally, the study places an explanation of librarianship within the 2008 definition of educational technology promulgated by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) and concludes that college librarianship is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources of many formats.

Multimedia and Cognition: Examining the Effect of Applying Cognitive Principles to the Design of Instructional Materials

The human cognitive system possesses a finite processing capacity, which is split into channels for various modalities, and learning can be inhibited if any of the cognitive channels is overloaded. However, although the amount of e-learning materials is increasing steadily, the design of instructional material has been largely based on intuition rather than cognitive principles. This research investigated if it is possible to improve the effectiveness of an established e-learning system by the application of cognitive design principles. And if so, does the increased development time and resources yield a substantial effect on learning. Quantitative data collecting during the experiment supported the cognitive principles based design and demonstrated that significantly better quiz scores were obtained in transfer and retention tests when compared against a more traditional design. The results of the study also indicate that the cognitive principles based design was both practical and feasible to apply in terms of necessary resources.

Design and Use of Instructional Materials for Student-Centered Learning: A Case in Learning Ecological Concepts

Efforts to improve students’ learning outcomes have suggested the need to embed the use of educational technology in a learner-centered learning environment where students construct their own meanings. In this study, video documentaries that asked students to explore problems associated with farmers’ use of ecologically unsound agricultural techniques were developed and used in a student-centered class. Their learning outcomes and experiences were compared to a group of students who studied the same topics in a teacher-centered learning environment. Results showed that the improvement of the student-centered group’s understanding of the problems was consistently higher than the teacher-centered group. Data on learning experiences also showed that the learner-centered learning environment tended to engage students in knowledge construction, while the teacher-centered environment, information absorption. Overall findings suggest that technology can change and improve the quality of learning outcomes if designed to support knowledge construction in a learner-centered learning environment.