This article illustrates how we incorporated discourse-based interviews (DBIs) into a mixed-methods research study informed by the heuristics of institutional ethnography (IE). As the first stage of a longitudinal study designed to understand what, where, and how "writing" means across our university, our research used DBIs in a writing…

The present study uses the intuitive rules theory as a framework to examine whether some of the difficulties in dealing with errors and uncertainties observed among students in the university physics laboratory can stem from their use of intuitive rules. The study also examines the relationship between the use of intuitive rules and laboratory…

Mathematics textbooks are a significant pedagogical tool, particularly in light of the growing interest in "flipped" classrooms. However, there has been little research on how mathematics students read and comprehend textbooks. This article uses the ideas of the implied reader, sense-making frames, and sense-making gaps to analyze…

In line with the growing interest in extending the diversity of CS students, we examined the performance of a unique group of students studying an introductory course in Digital logic: ultraorthodox Jewish men, whose previous education was based mostly on studying Talmud and who lacked a conventional high-school education. We used questions from…

This qualitative case study sought understanding of unique mentoring relationships of six faculty ambassadors and nine Hispanic first-generation students (HFGS) as part of a first-year initiative program. The single site was a career college in Texas, Taylor College. There were three research questions to guide inquiry comprised of six faculty…

In this article, I challenge the scholarly consensus that suggests students only rarely forge meaningful connections between the genres they compose in different domains of writing (Reiff and Bawashi; Yancey, Robertson, and Taczak). I argue that the genre and domain categories composition researchers have imposed through data collection and…

Community colleges are experiencing growing numbers of student veterans. Unfortunately, much training for faculty and staff tends to stem from a deficit mindset: the focus is on remediating what student veterans lack rather than building on their unique strengths. Training programs, courses, and college interventions that acknowledge and build on…

Clinical resources in nursing schools are always insufficient for satisfying the practice requirements of each student at the same time during a formal course session. Although several studies have applied information and communication technology to develop computer-based learning tools for addressing this problem, most of these developments lack…

This study extends the evidence for implicit second language (L2) learning, which comes largely from (semi-)artificial language research, to German. Upper-intermediate L2 German learners were flooded with spoken exemplars of a difficult morphological structure, namely strong, vowel-changing verbs. Toward the end of exposure, the mandatory vowel…

It is necessary to develop digital literacy skills with which students can communicate and express their ideas effectively using digital media. The educational sectors around the world are beginning to incorporate digital literacy into the curriculum. Digital storytelling, one of the possible classroom activities, is an approach which may help…

The purpose of this exploratory longitudinal study was to evaluate the efficacy of two new forms of recasts (i.e., elaborated and paraphrased recasts), each of which was designed to be more in accordance with contested views of input processing. The effectiveness of the two new forms of recasts was compared to that of conventional standard…

Sense-making theory involves a sociological/communications science approach to the need of students to make sense of their environment and the information they are seeking to find. With many digital resources to choose from, non-traditional students often have difficulty finding the best resource for their assignments, opting for the easiest path…

This paper explores the ways students perceive the transfer of learned knowledge to new situations -- often a surprisingly difficult prospect. The novel aspect compared to the traditional transfer studies is that the learning phase is not a part of the experiment itself. The intention was only to activate acquired knowledge relevant to the…

How do engineering students approach mathematical modelling problems and how can they learn to deal with such problems? In the context of a course in mathematical modelling and problem solving, and using a qualitative case study approach, we found that the students had little prior experience of mathematical modelling. They were also inexperienced…

Learning chemistry vocabulary that has both scientific and everyday meanings, which we call dual meaning vocabulary (DMV), can be challenging for many students. This qualitative study investigated how college students understand 11 selected DMV words before and after traditional chemistry instruction and to what extent they retain the scientific…