Early language experiences are vital to children's future success in school and quality language-rich interactions can be promoted at home and around the community in many creative ways. Project ELLO (Everyday Language and Learning Opportunities) is a research-based public engagement campaign that began as a novel and efficient way to address…

With the number of underprepared, at-risk students entering college, many institutions have developed initiatives to help support student success. Previous research has shown that peer mentoring has been used to support student success, but there is limited research on the mentoring experience from the peer mentors' perspective. The purpose of the…

Traditionally, active engagement in higher education courses requires learners to spend time reading sections of an assigned textbook. Feedback from learners suggests that they are discouraged from reading when the text is difficult to access and isn't engaging. As an interactive digital environment, Revel aims to enhance students' engagement with…

The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) provides professional development to teachers in the instructional strategies of the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) and the Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC). This professional development provides time for teachers to receive out-of-class guided instruction in planning assignments that engage…

The academic support system that is available online for distance students can prove quite beneficial to them before and especially during their course/programme of study. Potter posited that the goal of a programme's academic learner support services for distance learners must be to meet their needs by linking them with fellow students, faculty…

This paper employs sociological literature on risk and the commodification of education to explain current schooling practices in a context of increased concerns about students' behaviour and results on standardised tests of achievement. Drawing upon teacher and student learning practices in three school sites in south-east Queensland, Australia,…

The purpose of this contribution is to share reflections and practices in cultivating a community of learners in the context of a professional development programme at Master's level for language teachers. The programme implements a highly participatory pedagogical model of online learning which combines the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model…

Quality Matters (QM) has been transforming established best practices and online education-based research into an applicable, scalable course level improvement process for the last decade. In this article, the authors describe QM as an ongoing design-based research project and an educational input for improving online education.

This compilation includes materials celebrating the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Department of Education's Federal TRIO programs. The Federal TRIO programs were named such in 1968 after a trio of programs designed to foster increased educational opportunity and attainment: Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Student Support Services. Since 1968, the…

This paper describes a collaborative action research study in which peer assisted learning was deployed simultaneously across a range of disciplines in two institutes of technology in Ireland. The aim of the research was to determine if peer assisted learning enhances the learning experience of first year participants. An action research approach…

Recent studies have shown that employers are coming to increasingly value study abroad experience among prospective employees, and that study abroad may foster broad cognitive gains among its participants. In their survey of employer attitudes regarding international study, Stevan Trooboff et al. find that senior management and human resources…

Afterschool programs that provide strong science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) learning experiences are making an impact on participating youth not only become excited and engaged in these fields but develop STEM skills and proficiencies, come to value these fields and their contributions to society, and--significantly--begin to see…

After the school bell rings, young people are learning, exploring, making and questioning. Afterschool programs have long influenced students' personal development and supported their social and emotional growth. Today, the afterschool field has enthusiastically embraced STEM as an integral part of their educational offerings. This handout…

This study describes and analyzes the experiences of four secondary students during an urban summer school program. In the previous summer, over 90% of program participants passed the state course-end exam, compared to the city Department of Education's summer school pass rate of less than 36%. The study examines the ways in which different…

The role of motivation and collaboration in STEM learning and performance is paramount. A learning community represents an educational approach that can engage students in learning in a motivated, thoughtful, active, and collaborative way. The focus of this article is on the nature of students' interest, attitudes, learning experiences and…