John V. Dempsey

Forty simple computer games and what they could mean to educators

The purpose of this study was to evaluate computer games or components of the games that would lend themselves for use in an educational setting. Participants included 20 men and 20 women who volunteered to participate. All participants played four randomly assigned computer-based shareware or freeware games from among eight categories. Participants offered numerous suggestions for instructional applications of the noneducational games. Results suggested diverse patterns of preference and use between genders. Participants indicated many key features regarded as essential for an effective gaming environment as well as those that distracted them from play. Trial and error was observed to be the dominant strategy used across all game categories. In addition, participants suggested numerous educational applications for common categories of computer games.

Since Malone's Theory of Intrinsically Motivating Instruction: What's the Score in the Gaming Literature?:

Instructional gaming is an alternative strategy that can be used for many applications including tutoring, promotion of self-esteem, and practice of existing skills. The article begins with an overview instructional gaming and discusses the impact of Thomas Malones theory of intrinsically motivating instruction. Next, we look for common threads in the instructional gaming literature during the last dozen years. Our approach was to systematically examine five categories of articles in order to offer guidance to designers and educators. The article ends with implications of the gaming literature for the future study of gaming and instructional design.

Photo-Interviewing: A Tool for Evaluating Technological Innovations.

This article focuses on the challenges of collecting and using photographic evidence to evaluate technology infusion programs in higher education. Offering promise in bridging physical and psychological realities, photo-interviewing has been used in anthropology and sociology but rarely in educational evaluation or research. Using an evaluation of a 6-day introductory hyper- media workshop as an example, the authors discuss a five-phase strategy for applying photo- interviewing. Four polemics emerging from this process are considered.

Feedback, Retention, Discrimination Error, and Feedback Study Time

AbstractIn this study, 153 students enrolled in an undergraduate biology class for nonmajors were randomly assigned to one of four immediate corrective feedback conditions commonly used in computer-based instructional situations. In addition, the types of errors made by learners during instruction were analyzed and compared across groups. Dependent variables were achievement on a retention test, feedback study time, on-task achievement, and feedback efficiency. Results indicated that the group receiving simple knowledge-of-correct-results feedback used significantly less feedback study time and was more efficient than in any other condition. Consistent with prior studies, an adaptive design strategy overcame differences in retention that may have been observed with an instructional strategy using a fixed number of interrogatory instances. Learners who made fewer fine discrimination errors during instruction scored higher on a retention test. As expected, a significantly higher number of fine discriminatio...

Modality and placement of a pedagogical adviser in individual interactive learning

Fifty-eight graduate students in an education programme took a 40-minute computer-based instructional module on introductory statistics with a builtin solicited guidance mechanism. Students were randomly assigned to programs that used one of four types of advisement: on-screen digitised video of a human adviser, on-screen text-based adviser, pull-down digitised video of a human adviser or pull-down text-based adviser. Results indicated that the onscreen video-based adviser condition resulted in higher adviser use than both the text-based and video-based pull-down adviser conditions. Adviser use was significantly correlated with performance during instruction, with time spent during instruction and with television hours watched per week, but not with retention scores. Two non-significant but suggestive findings were that the video-based on-screen advisers were used twice as much as text-based onscreen advisers, and active learners used advisement three times as often as passive learners.

Error and Feedback: Relation between Content Analysis and Confidence of Response

Prior studies using science concepts and rules have indicated that learners spend twice as much time studying feedback after fine discrimination errors as they do after gross errors. Likewise, other researchers have suggested that learners had longer feedback study times after errors for which they had a high confidence that the response was correct. The purpose of the present study was to see if a relationship between discrimination error (based on content analysis) and confidence in response (based on self-report) could be established. Analysis indicated that, as in prior studies, the correlation between fine discrimination error and feedback study time was positive. The correlation between fine discrimination error and confidence in response, however, was negative. Possible explanations for these results are discussed.

Robert M Gagné

Robert Mills Gagné, perhaps the most prominent theorist in the field of instructional design as it came into its own in the last half of the twentieth century, died on April 28th in Signal Mountain, Tennessee (USA). He was 85 years old. Gagné was born in 1916 and received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1937. He received his doctoral degree from Brown University in experimental psychology in 1940. His career, spanning some 50 years, included academic positions at Connecticut College for Women (1940); Princeton University (1958 to 1962); University of California at Berkeley (1966 to 1969); and Florida State University (1969 to 1985). He served as director of research for the American Institutes for Research (1962 to 1966). Gagné also spent a number of years researching military training issues. During World War II he worked as an aviation psychologist. From 1950 to 1958, he conducted numerous studies of human learning and performance as technical director for Lackland and Lowry Air Force Laboratories. In addition, toward the end of his career (1990–91), he was a National Research Council Senior Fellow at the Air Force’s Armstrong Laboratories.

Using pedagogical advisement in technology-based environments

Education graduate students completed a technology-based instructional module on introductory statistics with a solicited guidance mechanism. Randomly assigned subjects used on-screen digitized video of a human advisor, on-screen text-based advisor, pull-down digitized video of a human advisor, or pull-down text-based advisor. Results indicated the on-screen video-based advisor condition resulted in higher advisor use than both the text-based and video-based pull-down advisor conditions. Advisor use was significantly correlated with performance during instruction, to time spent during instruction, and to television hours watched per week, but not with retention scores.