Relevant in many academic contexts, recent scholarship in sociology has challenged departments to improve the public face of the discipline through introductory classes. However, this scholarship has not addressed how departments can improve the discipline's public face while maintaining student performance. It is one thing to create an engaging…

The aim of the study presented in this paper was to compare undergraduate students' information comprehension under conditions where they took notes in longhand during traditional lectures and lectures given through slides. A quasi-experimental approach was adopted to collect the data from 42 participants enrolled in a compulsory course at a state…

Captions and subtitles as a form of scaffolding for audiovisual materials has gained much attention in second or foreign language (L2) learning in recent years and various studies report their positive effects on learners' listening comprehension. However, few attempts have been made to investigate how textual information specifically affects the…

Universities have experienced increases in technology ownership and usage amongst students entering undergraduate programs. Almost all students report owning a mobile phone and many students view laptops and tablets as educational tools, though they also report using them for nonacademic activities during lectures. We explored the relationship…

Teaching competence is an important skill for graduate students to acquire and is often considered a precursor to an academic career. In this study, we evaluated the effects of a multi-day teaching workshop on graduate teaching philosophies by surveying 200 graduate students, 79 of whom had taken the workshops and 121 who had not. We found no…

This study examined lecture capture as a way of enhancing university education, and explored how students with different learning approaches used lecture capturing (i.e., podcasts and vodcasts). Results indicate that both deep and surface learners report increased course satisfaction and better retention of knowledge in courses with traditional…

For many years (1995-2002), the Department of English of the University of Blida witnessed low rates of academic achievement of students preparing an English Degree. An analysis of the second year students' course grades in academic years 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 and data from a preliminary survey with some teachers reflected signs that the…

Reports a study that developed a strategy to help students comprehend and remember the content of training presentations. The study examined the effects of self-questioning and reciprocal peer-questioning strategies on preservice teachers' learning of orally-presented material and on their verbal interaction. Results suggest that this strategy…

An ethnographic approach to the study of second-language lecture comprehension was used to study 30 first-year Hong Kong Chinese students in a Teaching-English-as-a-Second-Language course. Results indicate student attitudes, problems, and their approaches to overcoming the problems. (17 references) (Author/LB)