Joost Lowyck

Designing Learning Environments That Support Thinking: The Jasper Series as a Case Study

Most instructional design efforts involve a minimum of four components; namely, a specification of (a) the goals to be met, (b) materials to be used, (c) teaching strategies to be employed and (d) items and procedures for assessment. These components seem to be important for any domain of instruction imaginable. Specific curricula involve specific values for each of the four components of instruction. Thus, curriculum designers often specify in great detail the goals, materials, teaching procedures and assessments. The strength of such well-specified efforts is that they make a complete curriculum package that is relatively easy to implement and evaluate. There is also a potential problem with such efforts. The more complete the specification of the values for each instructional component, the less inclined teachers may be to map into the unique features of particular students and communities.

Effects of Gender on Perceptions of and Preferences for Telematic Learning Environments.

AbstractThis study investigated gender differences in perceptions of and preferences for telematic learning environments (TLEs). We distributed a questionnaire among 1,368 traditional and open and distance learning (ODL) university students. Although we found significant gender differences, none of the variables included in the research could be regarded as important for explaining differences in students’ perceptions and preferences with respect to TLEs. Potential reasons for these results are discussed.

Hypermedia for learning cognitive instructional design

Within a cognitive view instructional materials help the learner to adapt his cognitive structure to the domain-expert’s one [26]. The mapping features of computer programs in general [17, 27, 35], and especially of hypermedia, hypercard and hypertext [26], gained therefore attention of cognitive instructional designers.