David Wiley, associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, is an adviser to P2PU.
To reduce the failure rate, professors use several instructional strategies and information technologies.
From pre-K to high school, the make-or-break factor is what the Harvard education professor Richard Elmore calls the "instructional core" — the skills of the teacher, the engagement of the students and the rigor of the curriculum.
An instructional program, Professor Teaches Windows XP, by Individual Software, will gently lead users through the new features and components of Microsoft's latest operating system with interactive lessons that include exercises, quizzes and plenty of graphics.
"Even in a place like Corning, which is a ways away from any other place, if the quality of life goes up, is it because the company ended up with lots more contracts and invited more people back?" said Phil Doughty, an associate professor in the department of instructional design, development and evaluation at Syracuse University's School of Education.
Adjunct faculty make up a majority of the higher education workforce -- a reversal from 1969, when tenure-track professors constituted 78percentt of colleges' instructional staff.
The findings of this study suggest that undergraduates may have different perceptions of GTAs and professors with regard to several important instructional aspects.
Economic realities dictate that universities rely on T.A.'s to reduce instructional costs and to allow professors to concentrate on their research.
"I think that by putting some of the spectacular professors, and putting their approaches and pedagogical instructional strategies that they use with their students in front of the world, it sets a new benchmark for all of us to learn from," she said.
Careful studies such as these will shed additional light on the complicated instructional relationships among undergraduates, GTAs, and professors, which may help each group to better understand how to maximize teaching and learning in undergraduate courses in the future.
