"The Instructor" magazine of The Deseret Sunday School Union of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1966. In a message of congratulations to the publication, the First Presidency of the Church pointed to the unique role "The Instructor" performs today in promulgating effective religious teaching. The message stated, "The articles contained therein, the editorials, and the Sunday School supplemental lesson material, have contributed much to the gospel training in the Church. It is a very superior magazine, being unsurpassed by any in its field." Because of this 100th anniversary and the unique role "The Instructor" plays to both the Sunday School organization and the Church as a whole, this study was undertaken.

Research on student attitudes and motivation is extensive (Schumann, 1978; Gardner, 1989). Student beliefs, although less researched, have also been studied (Woods, 1996). Student beliefs towards their instructor's native language could have an influence on their language study by impacting their language learning attitudes and motivation. While the native speaker (NS)/non-native speaker (NNS) distinction has been widely discussed in the English as a Second Language (ESL ) context worldwide (Medgyes, 1992; Phillipson, 1992; Canagarajah, 1999), research pertaining to the foreign language (FL) teaching context in the United States is nearly nonexistent.This study contributes to the body of knowledge concerning the NS/NNS instructor dichotomy by focusing on the NNS FL teacher in the United States. The goal of the investigation is to learn about the belief systems of American university students about what they believe are the general advantages and characteristics of NS and NNS instructors, as well as if they believe NS or NNS instructors are better instructors of specific areas of language study. Their preference for NS or NNS instructors is also examined. General relationships between the student characteristics of 1) being a Spanish major or minor and 2) having an interest to live in a Spanish-speaking countryand 1) NS/NNS instructor superiority belief and 2) preference for NS or NNS instructors are also explored. The instructors' beliefs about language learning are compared to those of their students. Classroom observations were completed to provide a descriptive component of the teachers' comportment in the classroom. Data were collected through questionnaires administered to NS and NNS Spanish instructors and students enrolled in first or second-year Spanish courses at the University of Arizona; interviews with Spanish instructors and students; and classroom observations.The data were analyzed and general findings emerged related to students' beliefs of NS or NNS instructors. Data show that a majority of students do not believe NS or NNS are better overall and also do not have a general preference but rather have beliefs about what should be included in the language classroom. Implications for FL programs, instructors, students, teacher development, and future studies are provided.

The purpose of this study was to (a) develop an evaluation instrument capable of rating students' perceptions of the instructional quality of an online course and the instructor’s performance, and (b) validate the proposed instrument with a study conducted at a major public university. The instrument was based upon the Seven Principles of Good Practice for Undergraduate Education (Chickering & Gamson, 1987). The study examined four specific questions. 1. Is the underlying factor structure of the new instrument consistent with Chickering and Gamson's Seven Principles? 2. Is the factor structure of the new instrument invariant for male and female students? 3. Are the scores on the new instrument related students’ expected grades? 4. Are the scores on the new instrument related to the students' perceived course workload? The instrument was designed to measure students’ levels of satisfaction with their instruction, and also gathered information concerning the students’ sex, the expected grade in the course, and the students’ perceptions of the amount of work required by the course. A cluster sample consisting of an array of online courses across the disciplines yielded a total 297 students who responded to the online survey. The students for each course selected were asked to rate their instructors with the newly developed instrument. Question 1 was answered using exploratory factor analysis, and yielded a factor structure similar to the Seven Principles. Question 2 was answered by separately factor-analyzing the responses of male and female students and comparing the factor structures. The resulting factor structures for men and women were different. However, 14 items could be realigned under five factors that paralleled some of the Seven Principles. When the scores of only those 14 items were entered in two principal components factor analyses using only men and only women, respectively and restricting the factor structure to five factors, the factor structures were the same for men and women. A weak positive relationship between students’ expected grades and their scores on the instrument was found (Question 3). There was no relationship between students’ perceived workloads for the course and their scores on the instrument (Question 4).

This study identifies and assesses a more specific relationship between the online instructor presence and the online learner's experience than is currently offered in previous studies. Guided by three questions, the study asked: (a) What is the relationship between the online instructor communication style and the learning experience, as defined by the adult learner's cognitive achievement, ratings of the overall course experience, and perceptions of the instructor's performance; (b) What is the relationship between the strength (contact frequency with the learner) of that communication style (facilitating or non-facilitating) and the learning experience; and (c) What is the relationship between selected learner demographic variables (previous subject experience on the job and previous experience with the vendor's online learning environment) and the learning experience. The study included an examination of ex post facto data that depicted the interactions between 89 students and 9 instructors in 358 asynchronous, professional development class discussions. The examination revealed the presence and frequency of select instructor behaviors more acutely define the communication style and strength of the online instructor's relationship to the professional adult's online learning experience. The study's additional findings support earlier research that suggests prior learner experience relates positively to online learning outcomes. These findings contribute to the larger body of knowledge related to online instruction. / Ph. D.

Misalignment between student preferences and instructor assumptions regarding feedback may impede student learning. Researchers have investigated postsecondary students' preferences for types of instructor feedback including written, audio, and video. However, postsecondary online students' preferences have not been explored in a large-sample study. This sequential explanatory mixed-methods study was conducted to describe postsecondary online students' preferences and the reasons for those preferences. Vygotsky's social-constructivist theory was used to frame instructor feedback as a scaffolding tool to promote self-regulation in student writing. A survey containing quantitative and qualitative questions was used to collect 93 responses from undergraduate and graduate students attending a large private online university; data collection also included interviews with a subsample of 4 volunteer participants who were selected using maximum variation sampling according to their degree program. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive frequencies; qualitative data were analyzed for emerging themes. Findings indicated that students preferred proximal, detailed, supportive feedback. Students' preferences were based on the desire to enhance their writing skills and understand point deductions assessed by instructors. Implications for social change include increasing instructor awareness of students' preferences and enhancing collaboration in the feedback process to promote writing skill development and improve academic outcomes among postsecondary students, especially those matriculated in online programs.

Abstract The role of military instructor was quite important in the military teaching, student counseling, the safty of a campus. Because of educational revolution and the whole people's national defence education, military instructor has been faced heavy attack. The purpose of this study are to find the relationship between recognition of changing in civilian post, organizational loyalty & job involvement¡VAn example of south military instructor in senior high school. This research uses Factor analysis, T-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation analysis and hierarchical multiple regression to study the relations of variance. 600 questionnaires were released. 241 are available. The results of this research result from the statistical analysis of three variables. They are recognition of changing in civilian post, organizational loyalty & job involvement. According to the analysis of the research data, we can get the findings of the study as follows¡G 1.¡§Benefit recognition¡¨and¡§adaptation recognition¡¨of recognition of changing in civilian post have positive influence to organizational loyalty. 2.¡§Internalization obligation,¡¨¡§identification to dedication,¡¨¡§initiative,¡¨and¡§ organizational compliance,¡¨of organizational loyalty have positive influence to job involvement. 3.¡§Benefit recognition¡¨and¡§adaptation recognition¡¨of recognition of changing in civilian post have positive influence to job involvement. 4.¡§Benefit recognition¡¨and¡§adaptation recognition¡¨of recognition of changing in civilian post indirect positive influence over job involvementthrough organizational loyalty as the intermediary variable. It is hoped that this results will provide useful information to the policy and decision makers as well as education administrations on how to manage and improve the quality of a military instructor's service on a campus.

No description available.

This study examines perceived benefits and costs of instructors who contributed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenCourseWare (OCW) project. While previous research has investigated the benefits and costs of OCW from the perspectives of the users and institution, the instructor's perspective is the focus of this qualitative case study. Instructors created the original educational content and would seem to have the most to lose by contributing to OCW. Data come from six years worth of surveys conducted by the evaluation team of the MIT OCW project, follow-up interviews with contributing MIT instructors, and a content analysis of written feedback comments received by the MIT OCW team. Findings include instructor benefits of: (1) improved reputation, (2) networking, (3) supplementary opportunities, (4) improved course content, (5) course feedback, (6) students accessing materials, and (7) working with the MIT OCW team; and instructor costs of: (1) damaged reputation, (2) loss of intellectual property rights, (3) requirement of extra resources, (4) realignment of individual professional goals, (5) public materials, and (6) working with the MIT OCW team.

Student evaluations are often used by administrators to make important career decisions for professors such as offers of tenure, increase in salary or other monetary reward (see Frick, Chadha, Watson, & Zlatkovska, 2009). Research has consistently shown that helpfulness in its various operational definitions is one of the most important traits to students when evaluating a professor (For example Silva et al., 2008). Previous findings have demonstrated that inequalities exist among subjective student evaluation ratings of men and women, (see Bennet, 1982). The present study extended this research by manipulating the instruction styles (strict vs. permissive), as well as the gender of the instructor, in a hypothetical syllabus. Participants were randomly assigned to read 1 of 4 syllabi which varied only by instruction style and gender of the instructor. Subsequently, participants answered follow up questions on the content of the syllabus which emphasized the gender of the instructor. Evaluations were collected in the form of both Likert scale ratings and responses to open ended questions. The written evaluations were analyzed for emotional content using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Software (LIWC, Pennebaker, Francis, & Booth, 2007). A 2 (male vs. female) X 2 (strict vs. permissive) between subjects ANOVA was applied to the data collected. The results support the hypothesis that gender inequalities do exist, particularly when the professor was established as having a strict style of student interaction.

No description available.