During the past three decades, the student populations of Australian universities have become more heterogeneous as the higher education sector expanded and new alternative entry pathways were established. Broadening access to university study and, therefore, to professional and semi-professional occupations, provides avenues for social mobility.…

The setting, marking and providing feedback on assessments form an important part of a tutor's role. Studies into the use of feedback and how it is interpreted by students indicate a mismatch between what students are looking for and what tutors think they are giving. Tutors comment that students are more interested in the mark than the feedback,…

There is not an organization in the world immune to crisis (Coombs, 2015). From for-profit corporations to the non-profit sector of higher education, research on various crises, and the communication surrounding them, has attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners over the years. This study contributes to literature surrounding…

The authors investigated the effectiveness of online versus paper assignments using final examination scores in three cohorts of theory of finance. In particular, two cohorts were exposed to online assignments while another cohort was exposed to traditional assignments. The central result is that exposure to online assignments robustly leads to…

As part of a nationwide effort to increase the postsecondary educational attainment levels of citizens, community colleges have expanded offerings of courses and programs to more effectively meet the needs of students. Online courses offer convenience and flexibility that traditional face-to-face classes do not. These features appeal to students…

During the past decades, little research has investigated the effects of immersion scheduling on the psychology classroom. Therefore, we sought to compare academic performance of students in 2-week immersion psychology courses to that of students in traditional 16-week courses. In Study 1, students who received instruction in a 2-week immersion…

This semi-experimental study was conducted with twenty-seven midwifery students who were randomly allocated to either case-based instruction or lecture-based instruction groups. The selected subjects -- foetal intrapartum assessment, foetal antepartum assessment, ABO and Rh blood group system mismatch -- were presented in four ninety-minute…

This study examines the effect varying models have on student understanding of fractions. The study addressed the question of what students know and understand about fractional concepts through the use of discrete and continuous models. A sample of 54 students in kindergarten and 3rd grade were given an interview pretest, participated in…

Teachers spend most of their time in school in classrooms, and their instruction and teaching practices may be affected by classroom context such as class size. We examine whether teacher effects interact with classroom context such as class size. Specifically, we seek to determine whether teacher effects are more pronounced in small classes than…

The worked-example effect, an application of cognitive load theory, is a well-supported method of instruction for well-structured problems (Chandler and Sweller, 1991; Cooper and Sweller, 1987; Sweller and Cooper, 1985; Tuovinen & Sweller, 1999; Ward and Sweller, 1990). One limitation is expertise-reversal effect, where advanced students…

Learning to program is a complex task, and the impact of different pedagogical approaches to teach this skill has been hard to measure. This study examined the performance data of seven cohorts of students (N = 1168) learning programming under three different pedagogical approaches. These pedagogical approaches varied either in the length of the…

In our research we investigate the use of online homework in principles of accounting classes where some classes required online homework while other classes did not. Users of online homework, compared to nonusers, had a higher grade point average and earned a higher grade in class. On average, both required and not-required users rated the online…

A comparison of the performance on the final exam for subpopulations of students in College Algebra was used to assess the effectiveness of online homework. Data was collected for two small groups of students, one with traditional paper homework and the other with online homework. The groups of students were further classified by incoming skill…

The student cohort on the University Science Extended Degree (SED) course is diverse in terms of educational experience. One of the key facets of teaching at this level is to engage and prepare students for higher levels of education in the sciences. The purpose of this evaluation is to relate a specific virtual framework, designed for students…

A recent study of the Minnesota Agriculture and Rural Leadership (MARL) program set out to determine the relationship between andragogical program design and increased levels of emotional intelligence (EI). Members of two cohorts in the MARL leadership development program received different levels of focused effort, peer coaching, individual…