Ronan S. Bernas

Evaluation Guidelines for Multimedia Courseware

Abstract This research sought to identify criteria important to multimedia instructional courseware evaluation and validate them with a panel of instructional technology experts. Data were collected with a Web-based survey using a modified Delphi research technique. During three rounds of questioning, experts judged 91 criteria as important to the evaluation of instructional courseware. The study also examined the effect of conducting panel discussions online. The method of panel discussion presented in the study enabled geographically dispersed discussants to examine criteria collectively. Although limited, participant commentary helped refine the criteria list. In general, participants agreed in their opinions and gave consistent criteria ratings.

Maternal teaching strategies in four cultural communities Implications for early childhood teachers

This article examines maternal everyday teaching strategies in Chinese, American, Hutterite, and Native American cultural communities. It moves beyond a theoretical framework based on distancing by suggesting that effective adult teaching strategies are contextually and culturally determined. The authors urge early childhood educators to make efforts to understand the complexity of a childs home learning environment and to maximize the learning potential of every child by taking advantage of his/her funds of knowledge in early childhood education settings.

Involuntary memory chains: What do they tell us about autobiographical memory organisation?

Involuntary memory chains are spontaneous recollections of the past that occur as a sequence of associated memories. This memory phenomenon has provided some insights into the nature of associations in autobiographical memory. For example, it has shown that conceptually associated memories (memories sharing similar content, such as the same people or themes) are more prevalent than general-event associated memories (memories from the same extended event period, such as a trip). This finding has suggested that conceptual associations are a central organisational principle in the autobiographical memory system. This study used involuntary memories chains to gain additional insights into the associative structure of autobiographical memory. Among the main results, we found that general-event associations have higher rates of forgetting than conceptual associations, and in long memory chains (i.e., those with more than two memories) conceptually associated memories were more likely to activate memories in their associative class, whereas general-event associated memories were less likely to activate memories in their associative class. We interpret the results as further evidence that conceptual associations are a major organising principle in the autobiographical memory system, and attempt to explain why general-event associations have shorter lifespans than conceptual associations.

Variations of Maternal Support to Children's Early Literacy Development in Chinese and American Indian Families: Implications for Early Childhood Educators.

This paper presents a study that aims to help early childhood educators understand the cultural context in early language and literacy development. It examines how mothers in Chinese and American Indian families support their young children’s emergent literacy development during everyday interactions. Twenty mother-child dyads in each cultural community participated in the study. The results of the study indicate that Chinese and American Indian mothers differed greatly in the ways they supported their children in early literacy. The Chinese mothers tended to privilege print-based literacy interactions more than the American Indian mothers. The American Indian mothers tended to privilege the literacy interactions that were based on oral narratives of life and personal experiences. Moreover, the mothers in the two communities emphasized and supported different aspects of their children’s early literacy development. The Chinese mothers tended to support their children in explicit, event-specific and elaborative ways. In contrast, the American Indian mothers tended to support their children in implicit and contextual ways. This study suggests that early childhood educators must understand the specific meanings of early literacy in different cultural contexts to maximize the learning potential of every child in the early childhood education settings.ResumenEste documento presenta un estudio cuyo propósito es ayudar a los educadores de la infancia temprana a entender el contexto cultural en el desarrollo temprano del lenguaje y la lecto-escritura. Examina como las madres de familias chinas e indias americanas apoyan el desarrollo de la lecto-escritura temprana en las intracciones cotidianas. Veinte parejas madrehijo de cada comunidad cultural participaron en el estudio. Los resultados del estudio indican que las madres chinas e indias americanas difieren grandemente en la forma en que apoyan a sus hijos en la lecto-escritura temprana. Las madres chinas tendieron a privilegiar las interacciones de lecto-escritura basada en lenguaje impreso más que las madres indias americanas. Las madres indias americanas tendieron a privilegiar las interacciones de lectoescritura basadas en narrativas orales sobre experiencias de vida y personales. Además, las madres de las dos comunidades enfatizaron y apoyaron diferentes aspectos del desarrollo temprano de lecto-escritura. Las madres chinas tendieron a apoyar a sus hijos de manera explicita, especifica del evento y elaborada. En contraste, las madres indias americanas tendieron a apoyar a sus hijos de forma implícita y contextual. Este estudio sugiere que los educadores de la infancia temprana deben entender los significados especificos de la lectoescritura temprana en diferentes contextos culturales para maximizar el potencial de aprendizaje de cada niño en los escenarios educativos de la infancia temprano.RésuméCette étude vise à aider les enseignants du préscolaire à comprendre le contexte culturel dans lequel s’opère le développement précoce du langage et de la faculté à lire et à écrire. Elle examine le rôle que les mères de familles chinoises et indiennes d’Amérique jouent dans l’émergence de l’apprentissage du lire et de l’écrire de leurs jeunes enfants au cours de leurs interactions quotidiennes. Vingt paires mère-enfant de chaque communauté ont participé à l’étude. Les résultats obtenus indiquent que les mères chinoises et indiennes d’Amérique diffèrent grandement dans l’aide qu’elles apportent à leurs enfants au cours du développement de l’apprentissage à lire et à écrire. les mères chinoises ont plus tendance à privilégier les interactions basées sur la chose imprimée que les mères indiennes d’Amérique. A l’inverse, ces dernières préferent baser leurs interactions sur des narrations orales portant sur la vie en général ainsi que sur leurs expériences personnelles. De plus, les mères des deux communautés privilégient différents aspects du développement précoce de l’écriture et de la lecture de leurs enfants. L’aide que les mères chinoises apportent à leurs enfants est plutôt explicite, élaborant et se concentrant sur des événements spécifiques, alors que les mères indiennes ont tendance à aider leurs enfants de façon implicite et en contexte. Il ressort de cette étude que les enseignants du préscolaire doivent impérativement comprendre le fonctionnement exact des mécanismes d’apprentissage du lire et de l’écrire dans des contextes différents, et ce afin d’optimiser le potentiel d’apprentissage de chaque enfant dans un environment éducatif préscolaire.

Responding to Children's Everyday Transgressions in Chinese Working-Class Families.

This study examines how working‐class mothers in the Peoples Republic of China respond to their young childrens transgressions in everyday contexts. Twenty 4‐year‐old children and their mothers in a working‐class neighbourhood were observed in their daily routines at home. When addressing childrens transgressions and socialising desirable behaviour, mothers frequently made references to other children, childrens media characters, past transgressions, authority figures and quotes from the classics. Moreover, the study indicates that mothers responded differently to some of the transgressions committed by boys as opposed to girls. This study also demonstrates that children understood social and moral rules by spontaneously elaborating on and appropriating the socialisation strategies used by their mothers.

Identifying Important Criteria for Multimedia Instructional Courseware Evaluation.

SOFTWARE SELECTION DECISIONS, especially when they involve sophisticated multimedia instructional courseware can be difficult for educators. Many confounding factors such as teachers’ inexperience with using instructional courseware and the emerging capability and sophistication of technology often make the evaluation and subsequent selection of courseware a challenging process.In 1999, a study was conducted in which a panel of instructional technology experts rated the importance of 110 criteria statements to multimedia instructional courseware evaluation. The criteria could serve as a basis for constructing evaluative instruments useful for software screening. Participants completed an on-line World Wide Web (WWW) survey on three separate occasions or rounds over a two-month period. All communication between participants and the researchers was asynchronous through the Internet.This paper describes the methods and materials used in the study. It discusses the criteria judged to be most important by the panel of experts and presents an analysis of their commentary, which was used to modify and refine the list of the highest-rated multimedia instructional courseware evaluation criteria.

Individual differences in recognising involuntary autobiographical memories: Impact on the reporting of abstract cues

This study examined individual differences in the ability to recognise involuntary autobiographical memories. We hypothesised that individuals may not always recognise involuntary memories which are cued by abstract experiences (e.g., thoughts or language), while they are better able to recognise those which are cued by concrete sensory/perpetual experiences. We hypothesised that individuals without formal training in psychology would be more prone to these recognition failures than individuals with training in psychology. We tested the hypothesis by comparing the results of general first-year undergraduate students, graduate students in psychology and graduates students in other disciplines after each had participated in a two-week diary study of their naturally occurring involuntary memories. The results showed undergraduate participants and non-psychology graduate participants reporting fewer involuntary memories being triggered by abstract cues than the graduate psychology participants, while the groups did not differ in the report of memories triggered by sensory/perpetual cues. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Helping students with cognitive disabilities improve social writing skills through email modeling and scaffolding

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of email modeling and scaffolding on the social writing quality of students with cognitive disabilities. Ten students from a university-affiliated lab school (mean age = 19.3; SD = 1.2) with an average of IQ of 55.30 (SD = 5.98) and 10 teacher candidates in a university teacher education programme participated in the study. The results suggest that all students with intellectual disabilities were able to holistically improve their social writing quality after exchanging emails with mature writers over a period of 15 weeks. Specifically, the students progressively showed various degrees of improvement in the areas of writing mechanics, lexical and syntactic complexity, writing cohesion, pragmatic propriety and writing motivation. However, the figurative use of language remained unaffected by the email modeling and scaffolding. Taken together, this study suggests that Internet-mediated formats, such as email, can reduce the anxiety of students with intellectual disabilities. Students feel more motivated to engage in writing and do so more actively in social media exchanges, thus improving their virtual social communication skills through writing. Teaching implications of this study are discussed.

No environmental context-dependent effect, but interference, of physical activity on object location memory

Research on context-dependent memory has addressed many external and internal types of contexts. However, whether the physical activity engaged in at the time of encoding and recall can act as an environmental context cue has been systematically investigated only in one study. The purpose of the present study was to replicate this; furthermore, given the effect of physical activity/effort on the way space is represented, we sought to extend the findings to object location memory. Using a 1-list paradigm (Experiment 1) and a 2-list paradigm (Experiment 2), participants had to learn the locations of objects on a grid and then recall them, while standing or walking on a health walker. No evidence of activity context effects was found. However, an interference effect of the motor task on location memory was detected, such that participants’ performance was worse when walking, compared to standing, at encoding (Experiment 2) or recall (Experiment 1). Results are discussed based on the outshining hypothesis and the possible link between motor task and object location memory.

Computer-mediated-communications, learning style, and visualizing online educational conversations

THIS DESCRIPTIVE PILOT STUDY employed the Grascha-Riechmann Student Learning Style Scale (GRSLSS) to examine student communication and interactions in an online educational discussion that occurred for fourteen days. Discussion activity exhibited conversational turns and messages appeared as conversation rather than expository. Individuals scoring high on the Independent scale of the GRSLSS tended to send and exchange more messages and were more likely to state and justify their agreement with other discussants. Those scoring high on the Avoidant scale were less likely to offer to take actions or to give suggestions about how to proceed during discussions. Student with high Collaborative scores were more likely to engage in scaffolding and to offer to take action on the issue being discussed.