My thesis work is focused on conceptual and epistemic learning and characterizing the environments in which this learning takes place. Earlier studies conducted by the Stowe group explored how instructional practices, instructional emphasis, and assessment emphasis relate to student outcomes in general and organic chemistry courses. Student…

The author discusses their experiences teaching an upper-division seminar course in a traditional face-to-face setting, and re-designing a "long eighteenth century" survey course for delivery online. The article thus explores spatial strategies in both face-to-face and online courses, and suggests ways in which they can be particularly…

This technical report provides information about the sample, survey instrument, and resultant data for the American Instructional Resources Surveys (AIRS) that were administered to principals and teachers in Spring 2021 via RAND's American Educator Panels. The AIRS focused on instructional resources used and supported in English language arts,…

This technical report provides information about the sample, survey instrument, and resultant data for the American Instructional Resources Surveys (AIRS) that were administered to principals and teachers in spring 2020 via RAND's American Educator Panels. The AIRS focused on instructional resources used and supported in English language arts,…

Teams of students in an upper-division undergraduate Usability Engineering course used a collaborative environment to carry out a series of three distributed collaborative homework assignments. Assignments were case-based analyses structured using a jigsaw design; students were provided a collaborative software environment and introduced to a…

This article focuses on the development of an engaging library orientation module for UC San Diego First Year Experience (FYE) courses. The library module included a brief in-class presentation about research concepts and library services, an online interactive library scavenger hunt given as an in-class activity, and a homework assignment where…

Our contribution focuses on synchronous oral telecollaboration in secondary schools. With reference to the EU project TILA, aspects of task design and implementation are discussed against the backdrop of issues of technological quality in connection with class organisation in computer labs. Case study evidence is provided in favour of the…

We present a writing task designed to increase students' awareness of chemistry-specific writing practices. This easy-to-use-and-grade task requires students to evaluate 10 short passages, a table, and a figure, representative of excerpts from Introduction, Experimental, Results, and Discussion sections of a journal article. Most of the items…

The Washington State University Honors College course, UH 290, "Science as a Way of Knowing," engages freshmen in scientific inquiry and scholarly literature research. The UH 290 instructor, a learning design consultant, and two librarians collaborated to develop and deliver the course's information literacy curriculum. The team used…

In the early 1990s, the National Science Foundation funded many research projects for improving statistical education. Many of these stressed the need for classroom activities that illustrate important issues of designing experiments, generating quality data, fitting models, and performing statistical tests. Our paper describes such an activity on…

This article describes a take-home literacy project in which kindergartners took home books, a stuffed animal, a camera, and a shared writing activity to complete with their families. The children later shared their writing and experiences in school. The resulting written responses and photographs depicted a level of involvement with the families…

Ensuring that students spend time preparing for class has always been one of the challenges of teaching. Indeed, when students are given an assignment that they are required to do before coming to the next lecture--whether it be written exercises or just studying--one wonders how often they are actually doing it. There are many ways in which…

A classroom field experiment was conducted on the effects of preparation homework and practice homework on student achievement in a fifth-grade social studies class, when used in conjunction with cooperative learning. The study investigated whether cooperative learning with or without preparation or practice homework produces greater student…

This booklet, one in a series entitled "What Research Says to the Teacher," deals with guided study and homework. The first section discusses the general topic of supervised and guided study; study methods and the psychology of learning are examined as are related factors. Section two takes up the topic of study at home: objectives of homework,…

This module on guiding student study is one of a series of 127 performance-based teacher education learning packages focusing upon specific professional competencies of vocational teachers. Addressed in the three learning experiences included in the module are making student assignments (in-class study assignments, independent study projects, and…