At many higher education institutions, admissions decisions often rely on standardized test scores and high school grades; yet, they are less reliable predictors for applicants falling slightly below cutoff points, what we call borderline applicants. Since borderline applicants are often from underrepresented backgrounds and diverted to 2-year…

As feedback is an important part of learning and motivation, we investigate how to adapt the feedback of a conversational agent to learner personality (as well as to learner performance, as we expect an interaction effect between personality and performance on feedback). We investigate two aspects of feedback. Firstly, we investigate whether the…

As evidence-based reform becomes increasingly important in educational policy, it is becoming essential to understand how research design might contribute to reported effect sizes in experiments evaluating educational programs. The purpose of this study was to examine how methodological features such as types of publication, sample sizes, and…

One of the trump cards of digital educational games is their enormous intrinsic motivational potential. Although learning game design is often understood on a one-fitsall level, the actual motivational strength of an educational game strongly depends on the individual learners, their very specific goals, preferences, abilities, strength and…

This paper offers insight into learning Slovak in an e-learning environment. The need to reach distance-learners of Slovak led to the implementation of a web-based course on Slovak language and culture in 2008-2010. The pedagogical basis of the course, called Virtual Slovak, is the socioconstructivist approach to teaching and learning, in which…

Based on current theories of multimedia learning, we propose a strategy for learning from animations. Two different experimental studies were conducted in order to evaluate the strategy. In the first study, 22 sixth graders learned from an animation without the strategy while 21 students were encouraged to make use of the proposed strategy during…

If the purpose of language learning is communication, then improving students' reading comprehension competence becomes an overall goal in language teaching. This paper examines the online resources of reading comprehension tests with non-English major college students, and tackles the problem with the teaching method of integrating web-based…

In an attempt to prevent drug abuse, the U.S. Army developed drug education programs (DEP) at all its installations to inform soldiers about the dynamics and consequences of drug use. This paper presents the findings of the recently completed evaluation of Army DEP. The study surveyed 1,716 enlisted men at 16 posts about exposure to the DEP and…

In 1973 the Michigan Department of Education and the Cooperative Accountability Project attempted to develop a greater understanding of the problems which might be associated with dissemination of information about educational accountability programs. From this project three papers resulted that outlined a potential dissemination model designed to…

Practical methods for implementing true experimental designs in evaluation settings in which such designs are rarely used are presented. Particular attention is paid to educational settings. (Author/JKS)

The Education Voucher Demonstration is a large-scale educational and social intervention that began in the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District, San Jose, California, in September 1972. First funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, it is now sponsored by the National Institute of Education. This report describes the development of…

This report describes the problems related to control of or variety in curriculum in studies of teaching and the procedures used in one phase of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study to control to some extent the curriculum in reading and mathematics. The major focus of the document is the plan for further study of aspects of Experimental…

Because it included only public schools and guaranteed both school survival and staff employment rights, the first year of the Alum Rock demonstration (1972-73), as sponsored by the Office of Economic Opportunity, was not a test of vouchers as defined in theory. The demonstration was known, therefore, as a "transition" voucher model,…

During the 1972-73 school year, the Alum Rock Voucher Program, an experimental program, was begun in 6 neighborhood schools in East San Jose, California. The program was designed to allow greater parent participation and choice in their children's education. This illustrated, bilingual pamphlet, written as a story told by 2 caricatures, discusses…

Covered in this report are the main events that occurred in the Alum Rock voucher project between July 1974 and January 1976. Measures considered to be functioning effectively at the beginning of this time span were the concepts of alternative education, open enrollment, programs that vary their capacity in response to parent demand within the…