Open Education Practices (OEP) have been proposed as a way to increase both engagement in learning, and lower costs. Broadly, Open Educational Practices involve learners in creating, evaluating, remixing, or otherwise modifying Open Education Resources (OER). Aspirational descriptions of OEP frame them both as liberatory by engaging learners…

That writing can support students' learning in science and mathematics has been documented, yet little is known about how empirical findings have been applied in (1) materials designed to support science and math instruction; and (2) informal learning environments mediated by peer instructors. This dissertation examines two relatively unexplored…

This study utilizes action research to examine the design and implementation of inquiry-based teaching in a middle school social studies classroom. As a practitioner, fulfilling the role of teacher and researcher, I sought to better understand my teaching practices. To do so, I collected multiple forms of data that would help me understand…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine how well the use of transparent assignment design, based on the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) framework, worked in introductory special education courses for preservice teachers at a public comprehensive university located in a rural area of the southeastern United States. In…

Gameful course design creates learning environments that support student motivation, drawing inspiration from well-designed games. This dissertation establishes the theoretical framework on which gameful pedagogy is founded. One key piece of gameful course design is that the instructor creates opportunities for students to make decisions about how…

This three-article dissertation explores Learning by Evaluating (LbE), an educational approach that enhances student learning through the process of assessing and providing feedback on peer work. Leveraging principles of comparative judgement, students evaluate pairs of exemplars side-by-side to determine which is better and provide a rational for…

Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) presents postsecondary educators with a conundrum: how to design and support small-group activities without stifling deep and meaningful learning. The literature indicates that students are not consistently practicing higher-order cognitive activities, educators are not reliably designing or…

This exploratory case study involved the development and enactment of a multicultural unit. As the population of the school continues to become more diverse there became a need to educate students to become more culturally aware. The main purpose of the study was to raise students' awareness and appreciation for cultural diversity through…

With the rapid development of Web 2.0 in the field of education, which allows users to interact and collaborate with teachers and peers on the web, many researchers have focused on exploring the developments of using Course Manage System (CMS) in service of L2 writing (e.g., Chun, 2011; Warschauer & Grimes, 2007). Simultaneously, participation…

More and more educational institutions have been moving towards delivering courses and programs at a distance. Although asynchronous online courses overcome the constraints of time, students feel isolated due to the lack of real-time communications. One possible solution to overcome this isolation been suggested that learner's online behavior and…

This study investigated the effect of student prior knowledge and feedback type on student achievement and satisfaction in an introductory managerial accounting course using computer-based formative assessment tools. The study involved a redesign of the existing Job Order Costing unit using the ADDIE model of instructional design. The…

The use of hybrid learning (a blend of face-to-face and distance learning) is rapidly increasing in higher education. However, educational leaders have raised concerns about the proliferation of hybrid programming as an efficiency measure without appropriate attention to learning. This study examined the relationship between social, teaching and…

There has been an exponential growth in online courses offered at the high school level but little evidence as to whether they are as effective as face-to-face courses. It has become critical to understand and evaluate the effectiveness of online education in order to reap the benefits and reduce the drawbacks of contrasting learning modes. The…

This study explored social presence and interactivity in an online undergraduate program designed for adult students. Although social presence and interactivity have been shown to be important contributors to student satisfaction, and therefore essential to student recruitment and retention in online programs, the ultimate goal for the examination…

This research study had two purposes, (a) to design and develop a Web-based learning environment that supports the use of a set of reading strategies, and (b) to investigate the impact of this Web-based learning environment on readers' "memory" and "understanding" of an instructional unit on the human heart (Dwyer &…