Unfamiliar Country Research Articles

Stress Conditions and Mental Health Status of International Students Studying in Japan

In recent years, as international students studying at universities are increasing in Japan, so maintaining mental health of them living in unfamiliar countries is an important issue. The purpose of this research was to clarify situation of stress and condition of mental health among international students. We conducted a self-check question survey for 67 international students who came from 10 countries living in Japan, aged between 20 and 45 (average age was 26.4 years). The contents of survey were personal attributes, life stress, revised UCLA loneliness scale (20-80 points), and depressed state self-rating scale (CES-D) (0-60 points). For statistical analysis, Pearson correlation analysis with IBM SPSS 22.0 was used. The average years of residence in Japan was 2.07 years. Stressor of daily life were language skill shortage and various procedures are troublesome. Stressor of economic was weight of economic burden. Stressor of study were graduation thesis and the field of study and research is difficult. Hereafter, stressor of private expense students was having to do part-time jobs to maintain their lives. When Japanese language ability was high, stress on daily life and study was low, but stress of part-time jobs was higher. It was conceivable that international students with higher Japanese ability, demand on work will be also higher. The CES-D score was 15.57 on average and 37.3% with depressed tendency (16 points or more). The positive correlation was found between CES-D and stressor of daily life (r=0.311, p<0.05), stressor on study (r=0.246, p<0.05), loneliness (r=0.383, p<0.01). In addition, average score of international students' loneliness scale was 42.72 points. The positive correlation was also found between loneliness and stressor of daily life (r=0.311, p<0.05). Based on these results is necessary to pay attention to international students' stressors on daily life, study, loneliness, and mental health state. In this research, actual situation of international student's daily life, economic aspect, and academic stress were clarified. Providing support to maintain their mental health is important to prevent tendency of depression for international students who living with strong stress and loneliness.

Thinking for themselves? The effect of informant independence on children's endorsement of testimony from a consensus

AbstractTestimony agreement across a number of people can be a reassuring sign of a claim's reliability. However, reliability may be undermined if informants do not respond independently. In this case, social consensus may be a result of indiscriminate copying or conformity and does not necessarily reflect shared knowledge or opinion. We examined children's emerging sensitivity to consensus independence by testing whether it affected their judgements in a social learning context. Children ages 5, 6, and 8–9 years (N = 92), and 20 adults for comparison received conflicting testimony about an unfamiliar country from two consensual groups of informants: An independent group who responded privately and a nonindependent group who had access to each other's answers. We found increasing levels of trust in independent consensus with age. Adults and 8–9‐year olds preferred to accept the claims of the independent consensus, whereas 5‐year olds favored the claims of the nonindependent consensus and 6‐year olds were mixed. Although previous work has shown that children trust a consensus over a lone dissenter as young as 2 years, the developmental shift in this study indicates that children's reasoning about the nature of consensus and what makes it reliable continues to develop throughout middle childhood.

Patients with mental problems - the most defenseless travellers.

Severe mental illness occurring abroad is a difficult situation for patients, their families, and for the local medical community. Patients with mental problem are doublely stigmatized due to their mental illness and because they are foreigners in an unfamiliar country. The appropriate treatment is often delayed, while patients are often dealt with in a manner that violates their human rights. Moreover, repatriation - which is vital in this case - is often delayed due to the lack of international protocols for the transportation and treatment of mentally ill travelers. Authors analyzed several factors related to acute mental health problems during travel: the etiology of symptoms, the appropriate treatment possibilities abroad, and medical evacuation and repatriation of the psychotic patient. The article presents a brief review of travel-related mental disorders, the epidemiology of mental health issues faced by travelers, and the significance of pre-travel advice for these patients. The first problem is to recognize (and redress) the particular challenges faced by a psychotic patient in a strange country. The second challenge is to prepare the patients, often in a poor psychiatric state, for medical evacuation by commercial aircraft. Another important question is the best way to take the patient through customs and security control. All of these, as yet unresolved, issues can make the mental patient virtually defenseless. Although timely repatriation of a mentally ill patient is vital and urgent, most travel insurance policies exclude treatment and repatriation costs incurred due to acute mental illness. The high cost of treatment and repatriation must be paid by the patient or their family, which could lead to severe financial strain or insolvency. Changing the approaches taken by the local mental health care community, police, airport security, and insurance companies remain a challenge for psychiatrists.

(Research for Korean Start-Ups and Small-Medium Companies to Enter India Market)

(Research for Korean Start-Ups and Small-Medium Companies to Enter India Market)

Autobiographische Darstellungen von Identitätskrisen im Exil: Frederic Mortons und Ruth Klügers Suche nach Brücken in einer neuen Heimat by Dominik Hofmann-Wellenhof

Reviewed by: Autobiographische Darstellungen von Identitätskrisen im Exil: Frederic Mortons und Ruth Klügers Suche nach Brücken in einer neuen Heimat by Dominik Hofmann-Wellenhof Margarete Landwehr Dominik Hofmann-Wellenhof, Autobiographische Darstellungen von Identitätskrisen im Exil: Frederic Mortons und Ruth Klügers Suche nach Brücken in einer neuen Heimat. Transatlantica 9. Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2016. 178 pp. In this slim volume, Hofmann-Wellenhof discusses key topics of exile literature such as the search for a new identity and the confrontation (or suppression) of trauma through autobiography in his analysis of Frederic Morton’s Runaway Waltz and Ruth Klüger’s weiter leben. After the Anschluss, Morton was able to escape Austria with his family via London to New York. Ruth Klüger did not escape Austria and was interred in concentration camps, along with her mother Alma. Ruth and Alma survived; Klüger’s father and brother did not. Both women managed to escape during a “death march” in 1945. After a year of study in Bavaria, Klüger settled with her mother in New York and later moved to California, where she lives today; like Morton, who died in 2015, she has retained her dual Austrian/American citizenship. In the initial chapter, the author discusses such aspects of autobiography as writing as a process of self-creation, the impossibility of attaining a truly “objective” perspective because of the unreliability of memory and bias, and the interrelationship between the authorial narrator and the former self, the protagonist. He also contrasts the “classical” form of autobiography that, like the Bildungsroman, implicitly assumes the protagonist’s progression from innocence to wisdom and its “modern” variation that presents the author’s life as simply a series of disconnected events that might not lead to profound insights or maturation. This study’s focus is on the inevitable question of identity, rooted in the shared values of a community, and the disruption of those ties. As Erik Erikson notes, the successful creation of a stable self or ego is developed through the confrontation and resolution of these crises. The abrupt or violent displacement from a Heimat to an unfamiliar country constitutes a trauma that can lead to the repression of memories or the creation of one’s identity through narrative. Frederic Morton, like Joseph Roth, viewed storytelling as therapy, as a home in the wilderness in which one finds one’s moral compass by surmounting crises: “At the end of a good story, the reader has a roof over his head” (33). In his essay “Exile: The Modern Heritage” Morton considers the immigrant’s crisis, “the mobility of fragmentation,” as a modern phenomenon. The exile’s struggle between past and present, old and new values, and loss of [End Page 181] Heimat embodies, for him, the destiny of his contemporaries. The role of language in the creation of a new identity is particularly interesting. Like his idol Fred Astaire (in early life Fritz Austerlitz), Morton’s Americanization of his name Fritz Mandelbaum and his mastery of English helped him to assimilate into his new country and establish a new identity. He despised America’s unbridled capitalism and consumerism, yet sought refuge in its language: “Me, the chronic gringo, perennially at odds with the new land, who’s rooted himself doubly deep in its language, perhaps because he cannot be comfortable with its culture” (55). Klüger’s autobiography portrays a feminist sensibility and religion as two sources of identity formation. Klüger blames her mother’s decision not to allow her to go on a Kindertransport to Palestine on her ignorance of political developments: “Politik galt als ‘unweibliches Interessengebiet’” (72). She discusses Nazism as a masculine ideology but also considers the patriarchal social order of the twentieth century in which she is not viewed as a “valid” witness of her time because of her gender (70). This criticism is extended to her evaluation of Judaism: she believes that the Torah justifies the oppression and degradation of women (76). Particularly heartbreaking for Klüger is that she is not allowed to say the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, for her father as she is female. Thus, she feels as if her...

Is three the magic number? The role of ergonomic principles in cross country comprehension of road traffic signs

Road sign comprehension plays an important part in road safety management, particularly for those drivers who are travelling in an unfamiliar country. Previous research has established that comprehension can be improved if signs are designed to adhere to ergonomic principles. However, it may be difficult for sign designers to incorporate all the principles into a single sign and may thus have to make a judgement as to the most effective ones. This study surveyed drivers in three countries to ascertain their understanding of a range of road signs, each of which conformed in varying degrees and combinations to the ergonomic principles. We found that using three of the principles was the most effective and that the most important one was that relating to standardisation; the colours and shapes used were key to comprehension. Other concepts which related to physical and spatial characteristics were less important, whilst conceptual compatibility did not aid comprehension at all.Practitioner Summary: This study explores how road sign comprehension can be improved using ergonomic principles, with particular reference to cross-border drivers. It was found that comprehension can be improved significantly if standardisation is adhered to and if at least three principles are used.

“Storys, scalping and mohawking”

This work examines an often underappreciated factor in the defeat of General Edward Braddock’s infamous expedition against Fort Duquesne of 1755. This, of course, was the influence of the frontier tales, narratives and other stories (or the ‘rhetoric of fear’) fed to the regular British soldiery by their provincial allies—and indeed the colonial civilian population—as they marched across Western Maryland and Virginia on the long and arduous route to the Monongahela. These frequently exaggerated rumors and tales, evoking what many British colonists considered the almost mystical martial prowess (at least in North America’s backcountry) and merciless brutality of American Indian warriors, large numbers of whom were allied to the French, severely undermined morale among Old World soldiers advancing through what was a foreboding and unfamiliar country. This paper establishes that such literature and stories were factors of far greater significance than is recognized in traditional accounts of the Braddock defeat.

Care of Adult Refugees with Chronic Conditions.

Refugees share a common experience of displacement from their country of origin, migration, and resettlement in an unfamiliar country. More than 17 million people have fled their home countries due to war, generalized violence, and persecution. US primary care physicians must care for their immediate and long-term medical needs. Challenges include (1) language and cultural barriers, (2) high rates of mental health disorders, (3) higher prevalence of latent infections, and (4) different explanatory models for chronic diseases. This article discusses management strategies for common challenges that arise in the primary care of refugees.

Standardisation and adaptation of firms' export marketing strategies in familiar European and non-familiar non-European markets

Our study investigates the relationships between export market experience (internal contingency factor), competitive intensity (external contingency factor), marketing strategy adaptation and export success of Austrian SMEs. Drawing from contingency theory, we develop a conceptual model and test it with a sample of 115 Austrian SMEs. After splitting the sample into familiar European countries and unfamiliar non-European countries including CEE countries, we found a negative relationship between product adaptation and sales growth and profitability in non-European and CEE countries, and a positive relationship between product adaptation and profitability in familiar European countries. Our results demonstrate that promotion adaptation has a positive effect on sales growth and profitability in both subsamples: European countries and non-European countries including CEE countries.

Helping with the Acculturation of Immigrant Elite Coaches in Canadian Sport Contexts

With the globalization of sport, sport psychology consultants may work with coaches who have relocated from their home countries to an unfamiliar host country. Limited awareness of challenges faced by immigrant coaches may impede effective collaborations among immigrant coaches, peer coaches, and athletes, and create team conflict and performance issues for coaches and athletes. Within the current article, the acculturation processes of immigrant coaches are highlighted through four examples of how immigrant coaches have navigated these experiences in sport contexts. Strategies are proposed for sport psychology consultants to support immigrant coaches and those with whom they work to enhance communication and peak performance.

THE GEOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND TO THE ARRIVAL OF MAN IN AUSTRALIA AND TASMANIA

A USTRALIA and the Americas were both colonized for the first time during ?' the last Ice Age by a physically modern man, employing advanced Palaeolithic technologies. In both cases, man entered a new continent, adapting his own culture to deal with unfamiliar country, animals and plants, and conversely subjecting the environment to the ecological pressures of his own technology to which it had never before been exposed. The colonization may be seen as part of a general geographical expansion carried out by late Palaeolithic man, the move into Australia predating that into the Americas by at least 10,000 years. Their completion left the polar ice caps, and some islands of the Pacific and elsewhere, as the only significant areas of land still to be claimed. To get to America, the first colonists derived from the Gravettoid cultures of northern Eurasia, would have had to negotiate glacial or periglacial conditions, but their journey could have been carried out overland, and many of the plants and animals in the new region would have been familiar to them. Australia, however, could only have been reached by sea, the several water barriers of Wallacea (Darlington 1957 : 462) providing the shortest crossings, and the continent beyond, isolated since the early Tertiary, contained a largely endemic and highly distinctive flora and fauna. Most of the early Australian stone industries are characterized by flat convex edge, steep concave edge and high domed scrapers , with considerable regional variation. Their closest analogues are found in the late Palaeolithic Middle Stone Age industries of sub-Saharan Africa and India from which they were probably derived. The paucity of information about the Palaeolithic succession in the Asiatic neighbours of Australia does not yet permit closer comparison.

Driving an Unfamiliar Vehicle in an Unfamiliar Country

Chinese outbound tourists are pivotal global players in current international tourism. Their anticipated role in taking up new activities in the future warrants attention. This study focused on one emerging activity—drive tourism—as a model of the ways to manage the growth of new specialist interests. In detail, it examined Chinese recreational vehicle (RV) tourists’ self-reported safety concerns during their Australian RV trips. The study identified the successful coping mechanisms that Chinese tourists employ across the preparation, initial familiarity, and driving stages of their travels. A holistic safety and coping framework outlining 18 coping techniques was identified. The study revealed the symbiosis between tourists, tourism businesses, and associated organizations that can lead to positive behaviors to enhance safe and enjoyable experiences as new markets adopt novel activities in unfamiliar countries.

A diary study focusing on listening and speaking: The evolving interaction of learning styles and learning strategies in a motivated, advanced ESL learner

Abstract Using a personal diary, the first author, an advanced learner of English as a second language (ESL) who desires to improve her academic language competence, focuses on her own evolving learning styles and learning strategies for ESL listening and speaking while living in the US. The author examines dual contexts: the internal context of attitudes, motivations, and emotions and the external context of the unfamiliar country, its culture, and the author's observable interactions with people in that culture. She looks at how the internal and external contexts work together to affect her styles and strategies for learning. For this introverted, reflective, and visual learner, learning by listening to lectures and actively participating in classroom conversations are not easy tasks, but her diary shows that she eventually manages the different aspects of her overall learning style and learns to use relevant strategies that make her a more active classroom participant.

TEACHING LITHUANIAN AT JAGELLONIAN UNIVERSITY: HISTORY AND PRESENT

The aim of this study is to analyse the tradition of Lithuanian language teaching at Jagiellonian University and to discuss the current situation focusing, among other things, on the problems of methodology. Despite the fact that the Lithuanian language has been taught at Jagiellonian University for over a century, its teaching tradition and the current situation has never been thoroughly analysed. Moreover, Jagiellonian University must be the only institution of Higher education in Poland to teach Lithuanian almost uninterruptedly for a hundred years. Therefore, the present article also aims at commemorating this important anniversary by paying due tribute to people, the teachers and professors of the university, whose efforts helped to maintain Lithuanian at Jagiellonian University over this long period of time. From a historical perspective, this period of time was marked by rather complicated political relations between the states of Lithuania and Poland, especially at the beginning of the 20th century. For that reason, it was particularly difficult to preserve the course of the Lithuanian language at Jagiellonian University. In addition to historical perspective, the study aims at investigating the change in methodological and motivational aspects of teaching Lithuanian. Over this hundred-year period students’ motivation for studying Lithuanian has significantly changed. At the beginning it was a wish to learn more about an archaic language itself, which was almost on the verge of extinction but rich in its linguistic features and representing one of the two remaining Baltic languages, that motivated students to study it. In the later times, the Lithuanian language gained attractiveness as a language of a neighbouring, but still very unfamiliar country. The latter change was influenced by an altering situation in Europe as well as positive political changes in the relations between Poland and Lithuania. As far as methodology is concerned, the changes in methods were very much dependent on the changes in the teaching staff. In that regard, the hundred years can be divided into two periods: the first period lasting from the beginning to the last decade of the 20th century and the second period extending to the present days. The first period is marked by a constant change of teachers and the ensuing heterogeneity of teaching methods and learning outcomes. The second period is marked by more stability in the teaching process with the same teacher working for a longer time. Finally, a significant aspect of language learning that has been recently accentuated in the courses of Lithuanian at Jagiellonian University is the close interrelation between language and culture. Thus, the present study also examines the acquisition of linguistic competence in view of Lithuanian and Polish cultural differences. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.2.3

TEACHING LITHUANIAN AT JAGELLONIAN UNIVERSITY: HISTORY AND PRESENT

The aim of this study is to analyse the tradition of Lithuanian language teaching at Jagiellonian University and to discuss the current situation focusing, among other things, on the problems of methodology. Despite the fact that the Lithuanian language has been taught at Jagiellonian University for over a century, its teaching tradition and the current situation has never been thoroughly analysed. Moreover, Jagiellonian University must be the only institution of Higher education in Poland to teach Lithuanian almost uninterruptedly for a hundred years. Therefore, the present article also aims at commemorating this important anniversary by paying due tribute to people, the teachers and professors of the university, whose efforts helped to maintain Lithuanian at Jagiellonian University over this long period of time. From a historical perspective, this period of time was marked by rather complicated political relations between the states of Lithuania and Poland, especially at the beginning of the 20th century. For that reason, it was particularly difficult to preserve the course of the Lithuanian language at Jagiellonian University. In addition to historical perspective, the study aims at investigating the change in methodological and motivational aspects of teaching Lithuanian. Over this hundred-year period students’ motivation for studying Lithuanian has significantly changed. At the beginning it was a wish to learn more about an archaic language itself, which was almost on the verge of extinction but rich in its linguistic features and representing one of the two remaining Baltic languages, that motivated students to study it. In the later times, the Lithuanian language gained attractiveness as a language of a neighbouring, but still very unfamiliar country. The latter change was influenced by an altering situation in Europe as well as positive political changes in the relations between Poland and Lithuania. As far as methodology is concerned, the changes in methods were very much dependent on the changes in the teaching staff. In that regard, the hundred years can be divided into two periods: the first period lasting from the beginning to the last decade of the 20th century and the second period extending to the present days. The first period is marked by a constant change of teachers and the ensuing heterogeneity of teaching methods and learning outcomes. The second period is marked by more stability in the teaching process with the same teacher working for a longer time. Finally, a significant aspect of language learning that has been recently accentuated in the courses of Lithuanian at Jagiellonian University is the close interrelation between language and culture. Thus, the present study also examines the acquisition of linguistic competence in view of Lithuanian and Polish cultural differences. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7220/2335-2027.2.3

Navigating a car in an unfamiliar country using an internet map: effects of street language formats, map orientation consistency, and gender on driver performance, workload and multitasking strategy

Navigating a car in an unfamiliar country becomes one of the major concerns with driving safety. Existing studies mainly used survey, focus group and statistical analysis to study this problem. Although the navigation system (e.g. GPS) gains an advantage in providing navigation assistances, paper maps and particularly internet maps are one of major ways for navigating in an unfamiliar area. This study is one of a few experimental studies which addressed a typical multitasking driving behaviour (driving and navigation task) in a cross-culture context. Twenty-four native American-English speakers navigated a driving simulator in urban environments which involved three formats of language settings of the street signs (English, Chinese or no street signs) and two types of map orientation consistency (driving from south to north vs. driving from north to south with a north-up map). It was found that female drivers made more wrong turns only with Chinese street signs but not in the other two conditions compared to male drivers. This indicated that female drivers actually behaved differently from male drivers in an unfamiliar driving environment with unfamiliar street names language. Both male and female drivers benefited from English street signs and reported higher driver workload with Chinese street signs. Interestingly, the average glance duration of maps with Chinese street signs was significantly less than that with English street signs, indicating that even though Chinese language belongs to ideograph with graphical information, its graphical information was not that helpful in assisting navigation task. In addition, female drivers had more instances of collisions with other vehicles, a longer distance of deviation from central line position, higher driver workload and a longer time period of map glance duration. For the main effect of map consistency, drivers made more wrong turns and perceived higher driving workload when they drove with inconsistent maps. Further implications of the current study in transportation safety of globalisation were also discussed, including improvement of street sign infrastructures and optimal ways of using and designing internet maps for drivers navigating in an unfamiliar country.

'It was the Most Beautiful Country I have Ever Seen': The Role of Somali Narratives in Adapting to a New Country

Refugees are known to use narrative and draw on their memories of a homeland when displaced/in exile in an unfamiliar country to re-affirm their identities, and build a life in the new country. Nevertheless, little is known about how Somali refugees distinctively construct narratives in a new country as a means of coping in the present. In analysing narratives of Somali refugees who attended educational events in Melbourne, Australia, we examinedstories and memories as they relate to adapting to the new country. Drawing on a qualitative, mainly in-depth interview-based study with Somali parents and key informants, we argue that a collective re-imagining of Somali society is a key to the way people go about coping and managing current change. Despite experiencing the intense social disruption of civil war, idyllic stories of past family and community life are told, providing both a contrast to disconnection, individualism and risk inAustralia, as well as a thread back to a mythical Somalia.We argue that the particular narrative constructions put forward by participants are an important form of agency, counterbalancing narratives of oppressed refugees in a new country.

A Doctor's Response to Torture

Stepping off the plane in an unfamiliar country, jet-lagged, and unable to speak a word of the native language, I was a little disoriented. I met my patient at the hotel in less than an hour of my ...

The most vulnerable travelers: patients with mental disorders

Severe mental illness occurring abroad is a difficult situation for patients, their families, and the local medical community. Patients with mental problems are stigmatized due to both their mental illness and the fact that they are foreigners in an unfamiliar country 1. The appropriate treatment is often delayed, while patients are often dealt with in a manner that violates their human rights. Repatriation, which is associated with a better outcome of the mental disorder 2, is often delayed due to the lack of international protocols for the transportation and treatment of mentally ill travelers. Acute travel-induced psychotic attacks are a well-known phenomenon in travelers without a previous history of psychosis. Young adults may experience their first psychiatric episode abroad 3. Elderly people are also susceptible to these attacks 4. Patients with a pre-existing mental illness almost never seek for pre-travel advice, so the prevention of any acute exacerbation is difficult. Specialists in travel medicine usually have little experience with these issues as they usually focus on infectious diseases. There is research evidence that 11.3% of travelers experience some kind of psychiatric problem, with 2.5% suffering from severe psychosis and 1.2% requiring more than two months of therapy at home 5,6. The acute psychotic attacks represent about one fifth of travel-related psychiatric problems. Psycho-organic problems during leisure activities are as high as 5% 7. In a French sample, 15–20% of repatriations were due to psychiatric illness. These problems were predominant in long-term travelers, migrants or expatriates. According to international standards, public transportation should not be used for acute psychotic patients, unless stabilized on medication and accompanied by a knowledgeable companion 8. Most travel insurance policies exclude treatment and repatriation costs incurred due to acute mental illness. Modifying the approach to this issue by police, airport security, and insurance companies represents a challenge for psychiatrists. We believe that a clear set of guidelines, similar to those recently published by the WPA on other mental health issues 1,9,10,11, could help in detecting and managing the traveler with mental disorders abroad. An appropriate preparation of people with mental disorders who have to travel and the application of a protocol for repatriation when needed should decrease the reluctance of insurance companies to cover these patients. The issue, however, is more complex than it may appear. In fact, while it is probably true that many clinicians have difficulties to memorize, recall and correctly apply operational diagnostic criteria, it should not be taken for granted that they will not have problems to memorize, recall and correctly apply prototypes proposed by a diagnostic system. Many clinicians are reluctant to change the templates of mental disorders they have built up in their mind along the years. Being influenced by those templates, they may selectively catch or recall the various features of a prototype, or may read in a prototype description elements which are not actually there. Moreover, the expectation that a given patient will present the various components of a prototype may lead the clinician to infer the presence of clinical aspects which do not actually appear in that patient. Finally, a clinician may conclude that a patient matches a given prototype because several elements of the prototype description are present, while another clinician may conclude that the same patient does not match that prototype because some other aspects are absent. These are indeed the biases that the operational approach aimed to correct, and the risk of a return to the diagnostic chaos preceding the publication of the DSM-III should not be overlooked.

Conserving Time in the Classroom: The Clicker Technique

Any technique that conserves classroom instructional time without sacrificing the amount learned is of great educational value. This research compared a laboratory analogue of the clicker technique to analogues of other classroom pedagogical methods that all involve repeated testing during teaching. The clicker analogue mimics the classroom practice of dropping material that is understood by the majority of the class, as revealed by testing with clicker questions, from further lecture. A fact learning and retrieval paradigm was used, in which college students learned facts about unfamiliar countries. Compressing instruction time based on group-level performance produced as much learning as no compression and as compression based on individual-level performance. Results suggest that the clicker technique is an efficient and cost-effective method of conserving instructional time without loss of amount learned.