This article reports a quasi-experiment on the impact of contact improvisation (CI) sessions and free improvisation (FI) interfaces on dance proficiency, improvisation competence/output quality, and multigroup ethnic identity formation of Indian classical dancers in the United Kingdom, United States, Singapore, and Australia. FI participants…

Quality Assessment Frameworks (QAFs) are standardized templates that include pre-defined criteria, open questions, or a combination to assess the quality of evaluations. They support organizations to limit risks associated with poor-quality evaluation. Qualitative research focused on four QAFs shows that five dimensions of quality are assessed…

Asking students to explain why phenomena occur at a molecular level is vital to increasing their understanding of chemistry concepts. One way to elicit students' mechanistic reasoning and guide construction of knowledge is through Writing-to-Learn (WTL), which is a promising approach for students in organic chemistry courses. In the design of WTL…

This study investigates the relation between Viola Spolin's methodology of theatrical education and Konstantin Stanislavski's. It elucidates major similarities and diff erences between Spolin's theater games and Stanislavski's system in more detail than previous research. This investigation belongs to a research project on the origins of Spolin's…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, informal learning environments (ILEs) were forced to move programming online for the safety of staff and visitors. The Big Astronomy Project responded to the pandemic by releasing a planetarium show as a virtual YouTube 360 stream. This project was also utilized in the late stages of the pandemic in-person at…

Masking, the practice of hiding or distorting identifying information about people, places, and organizations, is usually considered a requisite feature of ethnographic research and writing. This is justified both as an ethical obligation to one's subjects and as a scientifically neutral position (as readers are enjoined to treat a case's…

When comparing social science phenomena through a time perspective, absolute and relative difference (RD) are the two typical presentation formats used to communicate interpretations to the audience, while time distance (TD) is the least frequently used of such formats. This article argues that the chosen presentation format is extremely important…

The purpose of this project was to compare two different COVID-19 Mexican "lotería" versions by Mexican-American artists Ernesto Quiñonez Curiel and Pinche Raf. Their work was inspired by the most popular traditional "lotería" set "Don Clemente Gallo," created by Don Clemente Jacques in 1913. Social semiotics was…

While many rubrics have been developed to guide people in evaluating the quality of Open Educational Resources (OER), few studies have empirically investigated how different people apply and perceive such rubrics. This study examines how participants (22 teachers and 22 non-teachers) applied three quality rubrics (comprised of a total of 17…

Background: Recent evidence suggests PechaKucha--a presentation style utilizing simplified visuals, narration, and rigid time constraints--may promote various learning outcomes and instructor goals better than traditional PowerPoint presentations. Objective: The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of students' PechaKucha compared…

This study analyses the role of communication in social activism from models that surpass the mere emotional reaction, prior belief reinforcement or brand identification. This paper tests the hypothesis that a message focused on the cause (and its results) will motivate a previously sensitized audience depending on their interactions with source…

Media criticism and media education have a lot in common. For example, both media education and media criticism attach great importance to the development of analytical thinking of the audience. Indeed, one of the most important tasks of media education is precisely to teach the audience not only to analyze media texts of any types, but also to…

With the limitations imposed by COVID-19 pandemic, educational regulatory bodies in India recommended a number of online education portals to support higher education. Present work undertakes a detailed study on these recommended platforms and presents a comparative analysis based on the relevant features. 'SWAYAM' a widely popular and emphasized…

This dissertation provides a comprehensive description of courtroom language as a register by exploring the situational and linguistic features of authentic and TV courtroom language, as well as four public sub-registers that occur within authentic and TV courtroom (opening statement, direct examinations, cross-examinations, closing argument). It…

We assessed the influence of genre-specific discourse knowledge and writing goals on the persuasive writing of 4th and 6th grade students with and without learning disabilities (LD). Students were first interviewed about their knowledge of persuasion and persuasive writing. They then wrote a persuasive essay about a controversial topic after…