[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] As part of a larger project studying undergraduate students' understanding of cosmology, we explored students' ideas about the curvature of the Universe. We investigated preinstruction ideas held by introductory astronomy (ASTRO 101) students at three participating…

The present study explores ways to enhance students' question-asking ability (i.e., the ability to ask critical questions), which is the premise of scientific inquiry and a precondition for effective science teaching. A survey of junior high school students in Zhejiang province in China showed that students' questioning behavior was not well…

Online learning has become a significant component of the long-term strategy for leading universities into the future. The rapid growth of online learning forces the need for academic accountability. The purpose of this sequential mixed methods study was to examine factors affecting student perceptions of online course quality using benchmarks in…

"Learner centered" term points out environments that attention to the learners brings to the educational setting. This term includes teaching practices: effort to uncover what learners think in a specific problem on hand, talking about their misconceptions and, giving them situations to readjust their ideas. In Learner centered…

Purpose, Scope, and Method of Study: Political self-efficacy is the belief that one can influence political processes and is an indicator of society's political health. While political self-efficacy may change over time, education is a powerful influence. Emphasizing civic and general education functions, the community college provided a unique…

This study examined whether life skills could be developed in a Project Based Learning (PBL) course. The participants were students enrolled in a graduate level PBL course. The same 35-question survey was given to students at the beginning and end of the course, and students were asked to rank their life skills using a Likert scale. Additionally,…

The purpose of this study was to design and develop an educational game which facilitates building adolescents' knowledge and attitudes in financial principles of a daily life. To achieve this purpose, the authors designed a learner-centered big game for financial education by applying an experience-based triple-diamond instructional design model…

By employing an action research framework, this study evaluated the effectiveness of a video-based curriculum in motivating EFL learners to learn English. Fifteen Korean EFL students at the secondary school context participated in an 8-week English program, which employed video clips including TED talk replays, sitcoms, TV news reports and movies…

There is a worldwide trend to modernize old power grid infrastructures to form future smart grids, which will achieve efficient, flexible energy consumption by using the latest technologies in communication, computing, and control. Smart grid initiatives are moving power systems curricula toward smart grids. Although the components of smart grids…

Despite numerous calls for science education to be driven by authentic investigation, many laboratory experiences continue to consist of disconnected weekly units during which students carry out instructions that lead to some predetermined finding. This study developed and evaluated a pedagogical design for introductory biology labs where students…

For second language writing (SLW) instructors, decisions regarding technology-mediated feedback are particularly complex as they must also navigate student language proficiency, which may vary across different areas such as reading or listening. Yet technology-mediated feedback remains an underexplored realm in SLW especially with regard to how…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a class in University of Malaya where flipped learning was applied, and to examine students' perceptions and feedback towards flipped classroom. Data were collected using both quantitative and qualitative methods, i.e. survey, focus group and individual interviews. The results indicated that most students…

The purpose of this investigation was to identify strategies used by effective instructors of developmental mathematics, and to discover the perceptions developmental mathematics students have about these strategies. While there are research projects focusing solely on developmental mathematics achievement, this study fills a need by incorporating…

In this multiple-case study, the author investigated fully online students' perceptions of and experiences with asynchronous and synchronous writing support options of an institutional writing center and a commercial tutoring service. This dissertation used a multiple-case study design (Merriam, 1998, 2009; Yin, 2009) to ascertain which features…

Recent research has discussed the opportunities associated with the use of social media tools in the classroom, but has not examined the perceptions students themselves hold about its usefulness in enhancing their educational experience. This research explores students' perceptions of social media as an effective pedagogical tool. Undergraduate…