Post-secondary institutions are required to complete a variety of quality assurance activities including external program review, a process of inviting external reviewers from outside the institution to provide constructive feedback on all aspects of an academic program. While external program reviews have been completed for decades, there has…

Background: Understanding knowledge utilisation in policymaking is a core task for the social and political sciences. However, limitations and biases abound in commonplace approaches to measuring such use. Consequently, we have little systematic evidence of the extent to which knowledge sources are used in policy decisions. Aims and objectives:…

A methodologically sound systematic review is characterized by transparency, replicability, and a clear inclusion criterion. However, little attention has been paid to reporting the details of interrater reliability (IRR) when multiple coders are used to make decisions at various points in the screening and data extraction stages of a study. Prior…

Modern band programs have spread throughout the United States to create learner-centered and culturally affirming school music experiences for children. The four key concepts of modern band, (1) approximation and scaffolding, (2) decision-making, (3) iconic notation, and (4) culturally sustaining (music education), are congruent with many…

There has been increasing interest in applying integrative data analysis (IDA) to analyze data across multiple studies to increase sample size and statistical power. Measures of a construct are frequently not consistent across studies. This article provides a tutorial on the complex decisions that occur when conducting harmonization of measures…

Collaboration is an important aspect of computing. In a classroom setting, working with others can increase a student's motivation to attempt more challenges, reduce the difficulty of complicated concepts, and bring about greater overall success. Despite extensive research in other domains, there has been minimal exploration within computing on…

From the perspective of study management, research is surprisingly lacking on two of the major challenges for planning and performing content analysis: determining the sample size (i.e. number of objects to code) and the required number of coders to hire. The optimization of both of these numbers will ultimately determine how efficiently available…

Tasks for teaching predictive modelling and APIs often require learners to use code-driven tools. Minimal research, however, exists about the design of tasks that support the introduction of high school students and teachers to these new statistical and computational methods. Using a design-based research approach, a web-based task was developed.…

How can we engage new engineering and computer science graduate students in meaningful conversations about research and publication ethics without establishing a common understanding of the issues and expectations? Most universities offer extensive responsible conduct of research (RCR) training programs, which are usually a semester-long. Absent a…

To provide personalized help to students who are working on code-writing problems, we introduce a data-driven tutoring system, ITAP (Intelligent Teaching Assistant for Programming). ITAP uses state abstraction, path construction, and state reification to automatically generate personalized hints for students, even when given states that have not…

This article describes the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) collection of "Essential Social Studies Skills and Strategies" in terms of common approaches to social studies teaching and learning (e.g., informed social criticism, reflective inquiry, transmission). We conducted descriptive and inferential analyses and found…

Computational Thinking (CT) is pervasive in our daily lives and is useful for problem-solving. Decision-making is a crucial part of problem-solving. In the extant literature, problem-solving strategies in educational settings are often conveniently attributed to intuition; however, it is well documented that computer programmers might even have…

Virtual reality (VR) is an emerging technology that is gaining traction in K12 education. Whereas well-designed and engaging VR experiences may be considered educational, teacher educators with content-area expertise are uniquely positioned to analyze the actual content provided by those experiences when determining VR's educational value.…

The US National Blue Ribbon Schools (NBRS) Program annually recognizes hundreds of schools successful in their states' accountability systems. NBRS are studied for effective practices worth replicating. In this study, 2016 NBRS Program applications (n = 24) yielded insight about espoused collaborative practices, providing information about the…

First sex marks a significant transition for most adolescents, yet teens often report that it was unplanned. Seventy-four college students participated in exploratory focus groups about their first sex. Although initially asked whether their first sex was spontaneous or planned, many participants revealed evidence of forethought or anticipation,…