Experiencing failure is an important part of the learning process, but undergraduate students often hold a negative perception of failure that may contribute to fear of failure and risk avoidance. We investigated the influence of instructor feedback, discussions of failure in the classroom, and course-level and institutional structures on…

This study explored how elementary teachers leveraged and structured student-involved formative assessment to promote metacognition and self-regulation. Research has suggested a connection between formative assessment practices (e.g., self-assessment and peer-assessment) and metacognition. However, this connection has limited empirical support,…

Background: A growing body of research in cognitive psychology and education research is illuminating which study strategies are effective for optimal learning, but little descriptive research focuses on how undergraduate students in STEM courses actually study in real-world settings. Using a practice-based approach informed by situated cognition…

Study programme withdrawal and student perseverance in post-secondary education are major challenges for post-secondary institutions, especially in view of the increasing difficulty of retaining the student clientele during the first year of university studies. To analyse the challenges students face in terms of learning strategies, we asked…

From a design perspective, the intentionality of students to engage in surface or deep learning is often experienced through prescribed activities and learning tasks. Educators understand that meaningful learning can be furthered through the structural and organizational design of the online environment that motivates the student towards task…

Students approach learning in different ways, depending on the experienced learning situation. A deep approach is geared toward long-term retention and conceptual change while a surface approach focuses on quickly acquiring knowledge for immediate use. These approaches ultimately affect the students' academic outcomes. This study takes a…

Currently there is a general uncertainty about what makes collocations (i.e., fixed word combinations with specific, not easily interpreted relations between their components) hard for ESL learners to master, and about how to improve collocation recognition and learning process. This study explored and designed a comparative classification of…

We examine a flexible assessment system that allows students to determine the weights allocated to each course component and to re-allocate the weights in response to achieved scores. The flexibility is intended to encourage students' participation in the learning process, thereby promoting self-regulated learning skills. We compare this…

The study buddy is a learning strategy employed in a graduate distance course to promote informal peer reviewing of assignments before submission. This strategy promotes student-student interaction and helps break the social isolation of distance learning. Given the concern by Arum and Roksa (2011) that student-student interaction may be…

The study of workplace learning and informal learning are not new to adult education and pedagogy. However, the use of mobile devices as learning tools for informal learning in the workplace is an understudied area. Using theories on informal learning and constructivism as a framework, this paper explores informal learning of registered nurses…

Classroom teachers are in the front line of introducing students to formal learning, including assessments, which can be assumed to continue for students should they extend their schooling past the expected mandatory 12 years. The purpose of the present investigation was to survey secondary teachers' beliefs of classroom and large-scale tests for…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to document the ways pharmaceutical representatives learn for work and report attributes of (in)formality and other characteristics of ways of learning perceived as effective and frequently used. Design/methodology/approach: A total of agents 20 from 11 pharmaceutical manufacturers across Canada participated…

The present study aimed to describe and evaluate a transformative, embodied, emergent learning approach to acquiring ecological literacy through higher education. A class of teacher candidates in a bachelor of education program filled out a survey, which had them rate their level of agreement with 15 items related to ecological macro-models.…

Primary objective: to develop a scale to measure students' disposition to engage in lifelong learning. Research design, methods and procedures: using items that reflected the components of lifelong learning, we constructed a 14-item scale that was completed by 309 university and vocational college students, who also completed a measure of deep and…

This paper reports on a study that employed metacognition and social cognition theoretical frameworks to explore and interpret students' views of their cognitive roles and the nature of the mechanisms that they considered influenced and mediated their learning within small group contexts. An instrumental interpretive case study methodology was…