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Developing instructional materials is a formidable task. Expertise, motivation, time and special equipment are all necessary to prepare quality items. Furthermore, very few things in training are completely new and, if even a part of existing materials is appropriate for accomplishing training needs, it should be seriously considered. This article develops and explains a procedure for identifying, locating, gathering, examining and adapting instructional materials. It concludes with the importance of, and a methodology for, trying out and revising the materials. If this evaluation procedure is omitted, because of time or other resource constraints, there is a risk that instructional materials will not facilitate attainment of the learning objectives. When this happens, the entire adaptation effort will have been in vain.

While the important role of information literacy instruction as a central service in academic libraries is well observed in scholarly literature, there has been little examination of the impact of the rapid increase of instructional duties on practicing librarians, whose traditional instruction duties have expanded or whose positions have not traditionally required leading a classroom. The study in this chapter explores librarians’ perceptions of the impact that increased instruction tasks have had on their day-to-day and long-term goals, perceptions of the support they receive in performing their instructional duties, and what types of instruction training they have received throughout their career. The ways in which the addition of instruction duties for librarians have been perceived by the librarians themselves as they strive to increase support for instructional services without impacting the library’s ability to continue to perform traditional public and technical services functions is discussed as a marker of the future needs of the field and the necessity of recognizing professional strain.

This study takes as its theoretical basis the models of Murray and Stern, Getzels and Thelen which hold that institutional characteristics interact in schools and determine student learning. Data obtained through observation, interview and completion of the Learning Climate Inventory (LCI) are provided by 867 teachers in 30 elementary and secondary schools. Analysis of the data revealed inter alia that (i) learning environments with 20–85 percent open instructional space contained 25–50 percent more instructional modes, student grouping patterns, team teaching and controlled student movement in the classrooms; (ii) teachers in learning environments with at least 20 percent open instructional space viewed the learning climate as significantly more open on four of five LCI factors; (iii) learning climate is generally more open in schools where student achievement is classed as high; (iv) the larger the school the more closed the learning climate tended to be; (v) teachers in schools with more frequent human relations programs perceived greater freedom to teach.

The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which first-year writing course guides contain instructional content and whether the ACRL Framework for information literacy has been addressed in these guides.

First-year writing course guides were identified from American Research Libraries websites and examined for instructional elements. These elements were categorized using a rubric that mapped the Framework to instructional content. Qualtrics was used to organize and analyze the data.

Most first-year writing course guides include instructional content, but less than half incorporate the Framework in some way. Guides that do incorporate the Framework focus on “searching as strategic exploration” and “research as inquiry”.

This paper provides librarians with practical information on first-year writing guides and includes examples of how the Framework might be addressed.

This study contributes to the literature on research guide content and is the first to invent first-year writing course guides.

The purpose of this study is to explore a support system for beginners in drawing in a networked environment. Learners can receive advice and assessments from art experts without time and/or place constraints by using the proposed system. The authors investigate the possibilities of online supporting drawing learning. Two key factors are introduced: a digital pen as a drawing tool and a drawing process model (DPM).

The major difference between an offline drawing class and an online drawing class is the availability of instruction during learners' drawing. The instruction for the learners' drawing process is more important than instructional comments for his/her work. Therefore, quick and personalized feedback from a tutor is an indispensable function for a networked learning environment. In this study, the learner's drawing process that is recorded by a digital pen is reused in order to replay and refer his/her drawing process. To generate an evaluation for the drawing process automatically, these data are also reused in the system the authors propose.

The paper provides three findings. One is the DPM to capture learner's drawing features. Second is a drawing learning support system based on the DPM. And third is a feasibility study of the support system in a real art school. In this study, the learner's drawing process is reused in two evaluations. One is the tutors' evaluation, and the other is the system's evaluation. For the latter, the authors implemented the automated evaluation function based on the DPM. This model consists of three types of parameters. They are the drawing step, the drawing phase and the features of the drawing strokes.

Because of the art school curriculum, the authors cannot examine the learning effectiveness deeply. So the research results in this paper may lack generality. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed approach further.

The paper includes implication for the skill learning support based on the ICT.

This paper fulfils an identified need to capture and support how drawing behaviour can be done.

The purpose of this research is to investigate student engagement in guided web‐based learning systems. It looks into students' engagement and their behavioral patterns in two types of guided learning systems (i.e. a fully‐ and a partially‐guided). The research also aims to demonstrate how the engagement evolves from the beginning towards the end of the interactions; which enables analysis to be performed on the quality of engagement.

An experimental study was conducted on 41 students from a public university in Malaysia using two web‐based systems as the main learning tools. The students' engagement data were captured three times during the interactions and once at the end of the experimental study using student self‐report.

The main outcome of this study suggests that student engagement was changing over time either in positive or negative patterns. The directions of change in both types of guided learning were mainly influenced by the students' background of knowledge.

This study demonstrates that student engagement is dynamic. Therefore, progressive assessment is a practical approach to obtain the engagement data which can be used to regulate and improve student engagement in web‐based systems. As a result, an adaptive and intelligent web‐based learning environment can be created.

This research proposes a new approach to improve students' engagement in web‐based instruction, that is, through a progressive assessment of their current experience.

Instructional materials enhance the teaching/learning process by exhibiting information necessary to acquire knowledge and skills. Focuses on printed forms of instructional materials and provides detailed information, including examples, on five types of job performance aids, three types of instruction sheets, and two types of modules. Checklists of considerations that affect the quality of finished products are also provided. Job performance aids (JPAs)provide procedural or factual guidance in the performance of tasks. They store essential details in a variety of functional forms for use just before or during task performance. Research shows that JPAs are a cost‐effective supplement or alternative to training. They reduce the time needed to master task performance and facilitate the transfer of learning from the training setting to the job. Instruction sheets assure that all trainees have the same complete and accurate information for performing practical work and for completing assignments. These sheets also help manage large groups of trainees with diverse abilities who are working simultaneously at several different tasks. Modules are carefully structured documents which facilitate self‐directed and self‐paced learning. While their components may vary, modules typically include learning objectives, an introduction, instructional content, directions, learning activities, and test questions with feedback answers. With modules, trainees assume personal responsibility for their progress. Regardless of the care used in their preparation, all types of instructional materials must be evaluated prior to general use. Presents a comprehensive quality control procedure for confirming effectiveness and value. This was prepared to enhance both formal classroom instruction and individual study. Figures, tables, checklists, appendices, and a glossary of keywords and terms, supplement the text in explaining the content.

As responsibilities of high school principals continue to expand, their workweeks become longer, and their attention is stretched in multiple directions. How principals from various school types use their time is influenced by their organizational structures and external policies. To gain deeper insights into the workload, priorities and constraints faced by high school principals, this study examines principal time use (PTU) patterns across different school types, including traditional public schools (TPSs), charter schools, Catholic schools and non-Catholic private schools.

Drawing on the national representative data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 in the USA, this study examines and compares PTU in various leadership tasks across different school types, controlling for school and principal characteristics.

Among various high school types, principals in TPS had the longest workweeks. However, the extended workweek did not necessarily result in significantly more hours or a larger proportion of their time dedicated to instructional leadership. Instead, TPS principals allocated more time to administrative tasks and student affairs than principals in other school types.

By examining PTU of different school types, this study adds new evidence on the influence of contextual factors on leadership behavior. It also offers policy implications to enhance principals’ capacities, alleviate their workload and to prioritize time use in different leadership domains.

Studies have shown that schoolteachers are familiar with instructional materials on the web and integrate them into classroom teaching. In Taiwan, there are a number of online instructional materials, with the Learning Fueling Station being a leading web site. Using this popular site as an example, this study seeks to investigate how schoolteachers navigate online instructional materials and for what types of instructional materials they are looking.

A total of 30 elementary schoolteachers were interviewed in their offices using computers to connect to the Learning Fueling Station web site, and web pages were visited as needed during the interview. Participants were asked to search for any topic in which they were interested, and the interviewer observed and recorded their search behavior.

All schoolteachers reported that they use the internet prior to designing their instructional activities. The two main reasons they gave for using the internet were to refer to other teachers' materials and to obtain up‐to‐date information on their subjects, especially in areas related to science and technology and social studies. Source materials (e.g. photographs and video clips) and ready‐to‐use instructional packages were two popular items that the schoolteachers search for online. Participants appreciated Learning Fueling Station's commitment to quality but reported that the quantity of information available on the site was insufficient to meet their needs.

Relatively few studies have dealt with issues concerning teachers' use behavior. The findings of the study could be helpful for those who are responsible for organizing or maintaining instructional materials web sites on the internet. School librarians may have a better understanding of teachers' behavior and work out a more useful library instruction program.

In grades K-3, the primary focus of instruction is learning to read. In grades 4 and beyond, however, the focus shifts to reading to learn. Whereas teachers may use a variety of instructional approaches, research has clearly documented that learning from text is the primary instructional model found in most classrooms. This means that efforts to close the achievement gap must focus on ensuring that all students can access text-based learning materials, engage with the content in meaningful ways, and ultimately demonstrate success in the form of measurable gains in learning outcomes. Whereas the philosophy of UDL is relatively easy to understand, it has proven problematic to design, implement, evaluate, and scale. The purpose of this chapter is to describe a universal design engineering approach known as Design for More Types that can be applied to the design of text-based learning materials, this chapter will describe the conceptual and practical issues involved in the development of text-based learning materials for diverse learners. We begin by providing some foundational concepts for this multidisciplinary work. Next, we provide a series of case studies to illustrate how universal usability can be applied to various instructional designs. Finally, we describe how the Design for More Types framework can be used in both research and practice.