Background: Research shows that how formative assessments are operationalized plays a crucial role in shaping their engagement with formative assessments, thereby impacting their effectiveness in predicting academic achievement. Mandatory assessments can ensure consistent student participation, leading to better tracking of learning progress.…

Behind every educational concept an opposing notion is waiting for recognition. Despite their avowed objectives, however, academic debates do not always encourage the discussion of opposing views. A review of sessions at the December 2011 Online Educa Conference illustrates that point and others about academic meetings. Opposing viewpoints may be…

In the 2011 Winter semester, the University of Guelph engaged in a pedagogical experiment: an online first-year seminar. This article is a conversation about the learning journey that surrounds this seminar, as experienced by three participants: Jacqueline Murray (JM), Professor of History and Director of the FirstYear Seminar Program (FYS);…

The purpose of this research was to analyze the experience of post-secondary first time online students combining time spent in the classroom-workshop with online course access, and their interactions with instructors. In the following discussion, and following the Cleveland et al. [1] model, a comparison between the categories "student's…

The development of computer-mediated communication enables teaching and learning to take place across geographical boundaries. An online synchronous learning environment with cyber face-to-face features affords students the sense of learning together online. This study reports a novel design of organizing a 16-week seminar for doctoral students…

Math is often taught poorly emphasizing rote, procedural methods rather than creativity and problem solving. Alberta Education developed a new mathematics curriculum to transform mathematics teaching to inquiry driven methods. This revised curriculum provides a new vision for mathematics and creates opportunities and requirements for professional…

This paper examines the Knowledge Age and how economic factors are causing educators to rethink and reinvent education. Two key factors in education in the Knowledge Age will be education for an economy of innovation, and the increasing virtualization of education. We present knowledge building pedagogy as a model for education in the Knowledge…

This paper introduces the Quail Model, a device for the classification and visualisation of learning goals. The model is a communication tool that can smoothen the discussion within a course design team, support shared understanding, and improve decision making. Its theoretical background mingles contributions from instructional design (Bloom,…