Studying physics for nonphysics majors at college level is usually a process of learning new problem-solving skills and sometimes seems a frustrating experience. In an attempt to provide students with more learning resources, online homework was required to supplement the instruction. This study reveals the role of the online homework assignments…

Student performance in a high school dual-enrollment chemistry course was compared with student performance in the corresponding traditional college course. The two courses were taught by the same instructor and evaluated using the same American Chemical Society (ACS) standardized examination. Interestingly, the high school dual-enrollment…

The importance of active learning in the classroom has been well established in the field of Economic education. This paper examines the connection between active learning and performance outcomes in an Economics 101 course. Students participated in single play simultaneous move game with a clear dominant strategy, modeled after the Prisoner's…

This study investigates the effects of collaboration and competition on students' learning performance in a course of business statistics. The collaboration involved a simultaneously organised group competition project with analysis of real-life business problems among students. Students from the following schools participated: JAMK University of…

Cooperative learning has many pedagogical benefits. However, if the cooperative learning teams become ineffective, these benefits are lost. Accordingly, this study developed a computer-aided assessment method for identifying ineffective teams at their early stage of dysfunction by using the Mahalanobis distance metric to examine the difference…

Is there an achievement gap for online reading ability based on income inequality that is separate from the achievement gap in traditional, offline reading? This possibility was examined between students in two pseudonymous school districts: West Town (economically advantaged) and East Town (economically challenged; N = 256). Performance-based…

The Michigan Context and Performance Report Card measures school performance by adjusting standardized test scores to account for student background. Comparing schools using unadjusted test scores ignores the significant relationship between academic performance and student socioeconomic background--a dynamic outside a school's control. The…

This research investigates similarities and differences in young children's early numeracy skills related to age, nationality and gender. The participants were five- to seven-year-old children from Finland and Iran. Early numeracy was investigated by using tasks measuring number-related relational skills (e.g. comparison, one-to-one…

The 2014 Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card is the Mackinac Center's second effort to measure high school performance. The first high school assessment was published in 2012, followed by the Center's 2013 elementary and middle school report card, which used a similar methodology to evaluate school performance. The…

Background: In PISA 2009, seven East Asian countries rank high among the 65 participating countries, but some of the differences among the seven countries are small to be of substantive meaning. Aims: This paper is an attempt to fine tune the comparisons for better understanding of the situation in East Asian. Sample: Data of the seven East Asian…

This study aimed to (a) assess language comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) without intellectual disability, (b) assess differences between ASD diagnostic subgroups, and (c) analyze the relationship between language comprehension and performance and verbal IQ, respectively. The 94 participants (83 boys, 11 girls; 4:0-6:8…

Multiple-choice (MC) reading comprehension test items comprise three components: text passage, questions about the text, and MC answers. The construct validity of this format has been repeatedly criticized. In three between-subjects experiments, fourth graders (N[subscript 1] = 230, N[subscript 2] = 340, N[subscript 3] = 194) worked on three…

This paper provides evidence on the sources of differences in inequality in educational scores and their evolution over time in four European countries. Using Programme for International Student Assessment data from the 2000 and the 2006 waves, the paper shows that inequality decreased in Germany and Spain (two "decentralised" schooling…

Second-year undergraduate students from 2008, 2009, and 2010 cohorts were asked to respond a questionnaire to determine their learning style preferences, the VARK questionnaire (where V is visual, A is aural, R is reading-writing, and K is kinesthetic), which was translated into Spanish by the author. The translated questionnaire was tested for…

Oral reading fluency is a critical feature and outcome of early literacy instruction and it has amassed great attention as a powerful predictor of success at all levels of schooling. We examined relationships between second grade oral reading fluency scores and third grade end-of-grade reading achievement scores for students (N = 9562) in a large…