Besides measures of students' performances, a valid assessment of students' efficiency in a teaching process should also include measures of invested mental effort. The research presented herein covers several approaches in measuring students' mental effort including 5, 7 and 9-point Likert type scales, time on task, as well as eye tracking…

The amount of information contained in any educational data set is fundamentally constrained by the instructional conditions under which the data are collected. In this study, we show that by redesigning the structure of traditional online courses, we can improve the ability of educational data mining to provide useful information for instructors.…

Recent studies of MOOCs demonstrate their ability to reach a large number of users, but also caution against the high rate of dropout. Some have looked closely at MOOC participation in order to better understand how and when users start to disengage, and, if they remain engaged, in what activities they participate. Most of this prior work relies…

Inquiry skills are an important part of science education standards. There has been particular interest in verifying that these skills can transfer across domains and instructional contexts [4,15,16]. In this paper, we study transfer of inquiry skills, and the effects of prior practice of inquiry skills, using data from over 2000 middle school…

A model of in-class and out-of-class learning in higher education is discussed, and the literature related to out-of-class factors and time factors in teaching-learning is reviewed. Three related models of school learning are briefly reviewed. John Carroll's model (1963) proposes that the degree of student learning is determined by the time needed…

Consistency Management and Cooperative Discipline (CMCD) is a research-based K-12 discipline management program that builds on shared responsibility for learning and classroom organization through the cultivation of democratic and participatory practices that are fair, inclusive, and caring. CMCD seeks to provide a stable and orderly learning…

Researchers have recently attempted to identify the characteristic behaviors of effective problem solvers. To assist those psychologists who work with teachers to improve student levels of persistence on academic tasks, this paper reviews the current literature on persistence. Persistence, or the amount of effort and time a student is willing to…

This document offers perspectives on the concepts of environment and order related to the classroom setting. Environment is explained as the physical milieu, action structure, and the fit between these phenomena. Order can refer to the system being "in order" or to the participants being on task. Examples are presented of relationships…

Researchers as well as others evaluating teachers or programs are often interested in the verbal and non-verbal behaviors related to the learning of students in classrooms. The Student Record of Behavior (StRoBe) is a classroom observation instrument designed to provide simple low inference information concerning student behaviors related to…

This packet provides the concerned teacher and supervisor with materials for learning how to determine the percentage of time their students are actively engaged on task. The materials include definitions of key terms, a list of situations during which students must be considered unengaged, sample forms to be used in classroom observations of…

The study examined how adding students with learning disabilities (LD) to regular education classrooms changed the behavior of nonhandicapped students and their teachers. Initial observations were of mainstream classes containing no learning-disabled students. Observations were again conducted after LD students had been mainstreamed for 8 months.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether students expected course difficulty to be reflected in grade distributions and in the amount of out-of-class effort required for success. Students from both upper and lower division classes described the amount of time they expected to spend preparing for an easy class, a difficult class, and a…

This study examined the academic engaged time of six students with low incidence disabilities who were enrolled in general elementary classrooms. These students participated in regular classes for reading or math, and at least one other subject area. The academic engaged time of these students was compared to that of six students without…

Cooperative learning aims to enhance students' on-task interactive behaviors in the classroom. Observation in Israeli elementary schools has indicated that interactive behavior of students in their learning sequence holds potential for quality cooperation and help among children, but that teachers lack the skills to structure learning tasks that…

After reviewing effective teaching research during the past 20 years, one basic question arises: do teachers make any difference? Specifically, do teachers' classroom practices have any effect on student outcomes beyond the effects of ability and home background? What knowledge of minimal teaching competencies has been gained, and how firm is the…