In this design case, we report our design and playtest of a form of alternative reality, educational simulation that we call a playable case study (PCS). One of the features that make our simulations unique is how they are designed to implement a principle called This Is Not a Game, or TINAG, meaning that the affordances we design into the…

Professional learning has been a cornerstone of Long Beach Unified School District's approach to comprehensive reform since the early 1990s. The myPD Unplugged podcast series is just one of the ways it is expanding professional learning content and access for educators in the district and beyond. The Learning Professional's editor, Suzanne…

The purpose of this design case is to report on the design of a course template to be used for institutional training at a public university in Turkey and to be published on the in-house learning management system of the university. Following a detailed description of the design context, the step-by-step design process is explained in detail with…

In this qualitative study, we designed an online mentoring program to complement school-based mentoring to enrich the quality of existing mentoring experiences and explored the impact of this project on the professional development of 12 EFL pre-service teachers in an English-medium university in Turkey and six qualified English teachers.…

Pandemic-related lockdowns and school closures took education into the virtual sphere. Hence, educators of all grades had to adapt to the challenges of remote learning by including digital tools in their teaching strategies. The global pandemic added a mandatory digital layer to the task of motivating students. Education technologies (edtech) and…

In our changing world there are many challenges that students face, one of them being temporary inability to attend face-to-face classes. This paper presents a perspective on how to best meet the needs of online learners, including such topics as course design, student engagement, challenges, and solutions. The information in this article may be…

Video and coaching as vehicles for teachers' professional development have both received much attention in educational research. The combination of the two, video coaching, where teachers watch and discuss videos of their own practice with a coach, seems especially promising, but there is limited insight into how the design leads to desired…

Background: Research studies on facilitating professional development describe the knowledge and skills facilitators need to effectively attend to teachers' learning processes. In this context, some studies gave rise to the question how to design learning opportunities to prepare facilitators to support teachers' learning during professional…

This study expands on the concept of outreach programs: museum initiatives that look for ways to reach and share knowledge outside their installations, often to schools. We aim to study approaches for the development of content for a history museum outreach program using digital technologies. The significance of this lies in investigating ways to…

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe risk their competitiveness if they fail to embrace digitalization. Indeed, SMEs are aware of the need to digitalize--more than one in two SMEs are concerned that they may lose competitiveness if they do not adopt new digital technologies. However, a key obstacle is related with decision-makers'…

As they emerge from the pandemic, universities worldwide are evaluating the adaptations in the education sector during the pandemic and determining their course of action for the future. In this work, drawing on the lessons from four courses across two different universities, a survey of over 300 students, and the literature, we present strategies…

This design case describes the tensions and resolutions related to the iterative design of a virtual STEM peer mentoring program for White and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) women in STEM study programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). Stakeholder feedback, along…

Opportunities for working, volunteering, and studying abroad have become popular in higher education as vehicles for the development of cultural awareness and global citizenship. However, such experiences on their own do not guarantee the development of such attributes. What appears to be essential to maximizing the benefits of educational…

This study showcases an International Learning Exchange (ILE) program between North Korean (NK) refugee students in South Korea and American university students from the US. ILE programs connect two or more linguistic/ cultural groups for intercultural awareness, which provide authentic communicative environments. However, the prevalent use of…

Background: Most studies of teacher professional development (PD) do not rigorously test impact on teaching practice and student learning. This makes it difficult to define what is truly "effective." The "Science Teachers Learning from Lesson Analysis" (STeLLA) PD program, in contrast, was studied in a cluster randomized…