Failure to adhere to conventional spelling has academic consequences. When encountering spelling errors, instructors can pass critical judgment on students' writing skills, and even on cognitive abilities. Many students turn to spell checkers. However, we find grading rubrics for academic writing assignments to be inconsistent, and judgments about…

This study evaluated a bilingual text-mining system, which incorporated a bilingual taxonomy of key words and provided hierarchical visualization, for understanding learner-generated text in the learning management systems through automatic identification and counting of matching key words. A class of 27 in-service teachers studied a course…

Since the advent of the iPhone and rise of mobile technologies, educational apps represent one of the fastest growing markets, and both the mobile technology and educational app markets are predicted to continue experiencing growth into the foreseeable future. The irony, however, is that even with a booming market for educational apps, very little…

Computers can be an effective teaching method for students with learning disabilities (LD). The use of mobile devices as education tools for students with disabilities has received considerable attention in special education recently. Parents, teachers, and professionals look for effective applications (i.e., apps) that meet the needs of their…

The purpose of this study was, (a) to describe the introduction of mVAL software and Charlotte Danielson Rubrics (CDR) as teacher evaluation tools; (b) to compare the process and outcomes of the new initiative with traditional systems; and (c) to evaluate the software from the perspective of participants in the system. This study highlights the…

In engineering education, assessment instruments are often developed to evaluate programs and projects. Unfortunately, these innovations are not always adopted by intended audiences. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (DI) Theory provides a framework to analyze characteristics of an innovation that will affect adoption. The Appraisal System for…

There is a pressing need for an evaluation rubric that examines all aspects of educational apps designed for instructional purposes. In past decades, many rubrics have been developed for evaluating educational computer-based programs; however, rubrics designed for evaluating the instructional implications of educational apps are scarce. When an…

Current literature provides many examples of rubrics that are used to evaluate the quality of web-quest designs. However, reliability of these rubrics has not yet been researched. This is the first study to fully characterize and assess the reliability of a webquest evaluation rubric. The ZUNAL rubric was created to utilize the strengths of the…

According to a study conducted by the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (2002), approximately 90% of universities and colleges of education use portfolios regarding student assessment. Forty percent of universities use electronic portfolios in teacher certification programs for licensing. Because of the popular use of…

This research focuses on the development and implementation of an adaptive learning and grading system with a goal to increase the effectiveness and quality of feedback to students. By utilizing various concepts from established learning theories, the goal of this research is to improve the quantity, quality, and speed of feedback as it pertains…

This paper presents a comparative evaluation of Google Scholar and 11 other bibliographic databases (Academic Search Elite, AgeLine, ArticleFirst, EconLit, GEOBASE, MEDLINE, PAIS International, POPLINE, Social Sciences Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, and SocINDEX), focusing on search performance within the multidisciplinary field of…

The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of using learner-generated and instructor-provided multimedia annotations on foreign language reading comprehension and attitudes. The four research questions are: (1) what are the effects of using different multimedia annotations on reading comprehension for learners of different…

There is no shortage of online learning platforms available today. Whether it is Blackboard (www.blackboard.com), Desire2Learn (www.desire2learn.com), Sakai (www.sakaiproject.org), Moodle (www.moodle.org), Angel Learning (www.angellearning.com), Datatel (projected to be a CMS player in Q4 2008; www.datatel.com, or another product, chances are that…

Describes how the authors took a small step toward using technology as they developed and used a rubric as a guide for reviewing software. Provides an example of the process of creating a rubric and a model for teachers to adapt or change for their own software evaluations. (SG)

With teacher shortages in both general and critical needs areas and constricting operating budgets, it is important for Colleges of Education to develop methods of providing alternative certification programs to reach larger segments of the population. One method of increasing the scope of potential preservice teachers is through the development…