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Forty years ago, Robert Gagne published the first edition of his book The Conditions of Learning (1965) in which he proposed nine events of instruction that provide a sequence for organizing a lesson. These events remain the foundation of current instructional design practice (Reiser, 2002; Richey, 2000). They represent desirable conditions in an instructional program and increase the probability of successful learner achievement in the program (Gagne, 1965, 1985, 1988; Gagne, Briggs & Wager, 1992). Other authors cite similar elements of instruction that promote student learning from an instructional program (Dick & Carey, 1996; Sullivan & Higgins, 1983).

This study investigated the effects of teacher evaluation and student self-evaluation on student performance and attitudes. Participants were 189 Latvian high school students and their 6 teachers. The teachers were assigned to one of three treatment conditions: no evaluation, teacher evaluation, and self-evaluation plus teacher evaluation. All groups completed a 12-lesson instructional program on how to conduct experiments and produce research reports. The teacher-evaluation group received teacher evaluation on their initial research reports. The self-plus-teacher evaluation group self-evaluated their reports and received teacher evaluation on them. The no-evaluation group received no formal evaluation instructions. Students in the teacher evaluation and the self-plus-teacher evaluation groups received significantly higher ratings on their final projects. The no-evaluation group had more favorable attitudes toward the program than the other two groups. However, the self-plus-teacher evaluation group was significantly more confident of their ability to conduct future research experiments independently. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures, and 28 references.) (Author/SLD)

This study investigated the effects of personalized instruction on the achievement and attitudes of Taiwanese students on two-step mathematics word problems. A total of 136 fourth graders in a Taiwanese public school participated in the study. Subjects initially completed a Student Survey on which they chose their favorite foods, sports, stores, classmates, and other selections. The most popular items were then used to create personalized math word problems for the pretest, personalized instructional program, and posttest. Subjects were blocked by ability based on their pretest scores and were randomly assigned within ability levels to either a personalized or non-personalized version of the print-based instructional program. After finishing the program, subjects completed a student attitude survey and the posttest. A repeated-measures ANOVA revealed that subjects in the personalized treatment made significantly greater pretest-to-posttest gains than those in the non-personalized treatment. Subjects also performed significantly better on the personalized pretest and posttest problems than on the non-personalized problems. Personalized subjects and higher-ability students both had significantly more positive attitudes toward the instructional program than their non-personalized and lower-ability counterparts. (Contains 21 references.) (Author/AEF)

This study investigated the effects of audio and text density on the achievement, time-in-program, and attitudes of 134 undergraduates. Data concerning the subjects' preexisting computer skills and experience, as well as demographic information, were also collected. The instruction in visual design principles was delivered by computer and included numerous illustrations. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three presentation versions of the instruction: text only, full text-full audio, or lean text-full audio. No significant difference in achievement was found for the three treatment groups; however, significant differences in achievement were found for sex (females achieving more than males) and self-ratings of computer skill (subjects with higher self-ratings achieving more than those with lower self-ratings). While overall attitudes toward the instruction were favorable, subjects in the full text-full audio treatment responded less favorably than their counterparts in the other treatments. (Author/MES)

The Division of Adult Education in the Arizona Department of Education and the Arizona Adult Literacy and Technology Resource Center contracted with the Morrison Institute for Public Policy to develop an evaluation system for Arizona's adult education program. During phase I, the institute analyzed existing program data on Arizona's adult education providers. Interviews were conducted in January and February 1997 of 379 current and past program participants; they were done in English or Spanish, as appropriate. Interviewees were asked 10 questions about reasons for entering the program, amount of time spent in the program, and feelings about what the program did or did not help them accomplish. Past participants were asked an additional question about their reasons for leaving the program. Findings indicated that over 90 percent of interviewees felt their adult education experiences had met their needs and been positive overall. The proportions of participants who mentioned having entered with a specific goal, e.g., preparing to take the General Educational Development tests or to get a job, were closely aligned with the proportions who said their participation in the program had helped them reach that particular goal. More than one-quarter of program participants in 1996 showed improvement on three indicators that suggested they were becoming more self-sufficient: moving off public assistance, gaining employment, and maintaining or improving their job situation. (Appendixes contain 10 references, 3 data tables, and interview forms.) (YLB)

The idea of learner control over instruction has enjoyed increasing popularity as a result of the growth of computer-assisted instruction in the schools. Some research results indicate that individuals learn more when given control over their instruction; other research indicates that individuals learn less effectively. This study investigates the effects of learner control and program control in full and lean computer-assisted instructional programs on the achievement of higher-ability and lower-ability university students. Subjects were 200 undergraduate education majors enrolled in their first semester of a professional teacher preparation program. The chapters from a required course textbook that were adapted into a computer-assisted program contained a total of 13 learning objectives. The program was developed in four versions that represent the four different treatment conditions (program-control lean and full and learner-control lean and full). Program control subjects were required to respond to all 174 screens in their version of the program; the full and lean versions varied in amount of practice-with-feedback screens (66 and 22, respectively). In the learner-control treatments, the learner began with practice-with feedback items for specific objectives. The lean version differed from the full in the manner in which students chose to add practice or move on to the next objective. A paper-and-pencil posttest covers the 13 objectives in the instructional program. A 13-item attitude questionnaire assesses subjects' satisfaction with the material, their perceived effort, desire for more information, continuing motivation and their confidence in their posttest performance. (Contains 25 references.) (AEF)

This study investigated the reading preferences of American Indian and Anglo children with respect to ethnicity of main character, gender of main character, and setting in children's stories. The 160 subjects consisted of 80 American Indians and 80 Anglos from Grades 2 and 3, divided evenly by gender and grade level. The study yielded significant preference differences for ethnicity of main characters, gender of characters, and type of setting. Both Indian children and Anglo children preferred to read about Indian characters over Anglo characters. A majority of all subjects indicated a preference to read stories with both an American Indian and an Anglo as main characters, rather than stories with two Indians or two Anglos as main characters. Males preferred to read stories with at least one male character over stories with only females; girls preferred to read about two boys instead of a boy and a girl. Both Indian and Anglo subjects preferred stories set in a suburban-type setting over reservation-like settings. Three statistical tables and sample illustrations used in the stories for ethnicity, gender, and story setting are appended. (Contains 14 references.) (Author/KRN)

Descriptive data were collected from male and female students in grades 7, 9, and 11 on five learner attributes commonly reported as influencing student learning and/or motivation: desire for approval of others, attribution of success or failure, desire for challenge in academic settings, perceived self-competence in school settings, and locus of control for learning activities. A 55-item 4-point Likert-type scale was developed--the Student School and Work Survey (SSWS). The SSWS was administered to 93 males and 106 females in grade 7, 96 males and 128 females in grade 9, and 105 males and 104 females in grade 11 at a high school in a large southwestern suburban school district. Pearson product moment correlation coefficients were computed for the 15 questions (3 per attribute) contained in the learner attribute section of the SSWS. These inter-item correlations revealed that, with one exception, correlations among pairs of items within a particular learner attribute were consistently significant beyond the 0.001 level and were consistently higher than were correlations with items assessing the other attributes. Females showed a higher desire than males for approval and challenge in school-related tasks. Data for males and females concerning attribution did not differ significantly, but reflected higher internal than external attribution for success in school. Relatively high levels of self-competence on school tasks and locus of control were found for both sexes. Compared to younger students, older students take less responsibility for their learning, desire less personal challenge, care less about the approval of others, and feel less school-related competence. Three data tables, two graphs, and a 20-item list of references are included. (RLC)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of three levels of learner control (no control, moderate control, and high control) on the achievement and continuing motivation of Hispanic students. Two weeks prior to the experimental part of the study, 101 seventh and eighth grade Hispanics were pre-assessed along an internal-external dimension. Subjects were stratified by sex and grade, then randomly assigned within classes to one of three versions of a computer-assisted instructional program on insects. In the no learner control version, subjects were assigned to the complete computer-assisted instruction (CAI) program consisting of informational screens plus all practice questions, feedback, and content reviews for missed items. Subjects in the moderate learner control version received the informational screens, practice items, and feedback, but had the option of bypassing each content review. The high learner control version gave students the option of bypassing each set of practice questions, as well as the content review, for each question they responded to but answered incorrectly. Continuing motivation data revealed a significant preference to study science when it was presented on the computer as compared to study of another subject in paper and pencil form. Analysis of en route data revealed that subjects under high learner control chose to receive practice 89 percent of the time, resulting in a small practice difference of 11 percent between program control and high learner control. Although females were found to have a much more internal locus of control than males, there was no evidence that Hispanic learners with an internal locus of control perform better than those with an external locus when given a relatively high degree of control in a CAI program. (32 references) (Author/GL)

This study was an investigation of the effects of narration and level of picture detail on children's recall of illustrated materials. Third and sixth grade students were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: groups one and two viewed two 7-frame stories accompanied by oral narration; groups three and four viewed the same stories without narration. Groups one and three differed from two and four in that the first story was low detail and the second was high detail, while groups two and four viewed the same stories in reversed detail level. The criterion tests consisted of 14 recall questions per story, seven about events relevant to the story, and seven about events irrelevant to the story. The tests were given immediately following the second story and again one week later. The results indicated that narrated stories facilitated recall significantly better than non-narrated stories; although low detail line drawings were remembered better than high detail pictures on the immediate test, the effect was not present on the delayed test; relevant events were recalled better than irrelevant events; and narration improved recall of irrelevant events more than of relevant events. (Author/CHC)

In this study of children's memory, two types of presentation modes (pictures or words) were crossed with two levels of memory strategy ("make a picture in your mind" or "think of the word") to comprise four treatments: see picture/think picture, see picture/think word, see word/think picture, see word/think word. The study was conducted with 144 second graders across three reading levels from a suburban public school. Stimuli were 40 words chosen from the concrete nouns in the Pavio, et al. (1968) list and simple line-drawing visuals representing each word. Stimuli were slide projected onto a screen for three seconds. After each slide the screen was blank for three seconds to allow subjects to think according to instructions of the object or word. A randomly ordered and counterbalanced criterion test composed of 40 multiple-choice items--20 word items and 20 picture items--was administered two minutes after presentation and again in alternate form after three days. Results for memory strategy, presentation mode, reading level, test mode, immediate and delayed test performance, and variable interactions are presented. The data indicate that memory is better for pictures than for words in both immediate and delayed tests, but the "think picture" strategy was not effective on the delayed test. Low reading group subjects. who had used the "think word" strategy performed slightly better than "think picture" counterparts on the immediate test and substantially better on the delayed test. (Author/RH)

Three experiments were conducted to determine the effects of student-preferred incentives across instructional tasks that varied in length and relatedness to course content. The first study was done to determine the effects of the opportunity to earn points toward the course grade. There were no differences between incentive and no-incentive students on any measure. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the effects of student-selected incentive on student's posttest performance and study time across two instructional tasks related to course content. Incentive students performed better than no-incentive students on program subtests which required stating lists of rules that could be committed to memory. Experiment 3 was done to determine the effects of a highly preferred incentive, release from final examination, when used under instructional procedures in a two-week instructional unit. Effects of the incentive were studied on posttest performance, study time, student-initiated contact with instructor, and student attitude toward the incentives used. Students in the no-incentive condition scored higher than incentive students on a constructed-response subtest that required new rules applications. The evidence suggests that incentives are effective for memory-type tasks, particularly when the student is aware that rehearsal and memory are task requirements. (CSS)

This study investigated the effects of three different word-decoding instructional procedures: a single-letter (SL) approach, a letter-combination (LC) approach, and a procedure in which children receive several weeks' instruction in the SL method and then switch to the LC approach. Grade 1 pupils were assigned at random to the three treatment groups, and each group received a total of 28 days of instruction with its particular method. There were no significant differences between the three groups in achievement on the 32-item posttest measuring the ability to read words encountered during instruction and the ability to sound out and read new words, but each treatment group scored significantly higher on the posttest than did a control group receiving regular first-grade reading instruction. (Author)

This year-long study was conducted to investigate effects of various teacher accountability factors on reading achievement of first-grade pupils. Each of fifteen schools was assigned through randomized blocking procedures (blocking factors were reading achievement and percentage of minority students) to one of four levels of accountability. Accountability levels were defined from low to high as follows: use of the regular first-grade reading program without supplementation; the regular program plus a supplementary system including instructional objectives, regular assessment and remedial exercises, and objectives-keyed pupil performance records for each of the fifteen instructional units in the program; the second condition plus either a pacing schedule or reporting of unit scores to the school principal; and the second condition plus both pacing and reporting. A 45-item criterion test based on the major objectives of the reading program was individually administered at the end of the school year. An L-test for four rankings (accountability levels) by three observations (mean subtest scores on three major reading objectives) revealed a significant positive relationship (p < .001) between level of teacher accountability and pupil reading achievement. (Author)

The Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) Mod 2 Reading Program is planned as a four-year program (K-3) for teaching reading skills to primary-grade children. To date, all stories have been written for the first-year and second-year segments of the program. This paper describes the selection of rules and words, the number and type of stories, and the word-usage and story-length specifications for the reading stories in the third- and fourth-year programs. (Author/RB)

To investigate the type of classroom testing format most appropriate for the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) Mod 2 Reading Program, three types of teacher-administered tests for the SWRL Second-Year Communication Skills Program were developed and tried out during the 1970-71 school year. The tests were administered by the classroom teacher as Criterion Exercises following each unit of instruction. Two of the tests were group-administered and had a multiple-choice format, with one type consisting of three-choice items and the other four-choice items. The third type of test was individually-administered, constructed-response format. Both the individually-administered, constructed-response tests and the four-choice group-administered tests predicted well to an end-of-year criterion test, whereas the three-choice tests did not. Based on pupil-performance data and teacher reactions, the individually administered tests appear to be most appropriate for use as Criterion Exercises in the Mod 2 program. (Author/RC)

Presents methods and outcomes of a study that analyzed the relationship between learner preferences, received instruction, and learner control. Seventy-five employees of a major corporation were pretested before and posttested after receiving random instruction. Tables display mean pretest and posttest scores, and attitudes toward received training. (JMV)

Reports on a study investigating perceptions of K-12 teachers, educational technology faculty, and educational technology graduate students about instructional design, cooperative learning, learner control, school reform, computers and media, and implementation of a key practice in each area of their teaching. (49 references) (KRN)

This study investigated return-to-task rates on hard and easy tasks that secondary students projected for scenario characters and for themselves. Data revealed significantly greater rates of return to easy tasks. Girls had significantly higher return-to-task rates. Evidence of self-presentation bias was present. (SM)