The purpose of this project was to evaluate the Virginia Cooperative Extension internship program from the perspective of student participants and their supervisors. Three focus groups were conducted with internship supervisors from the summer of 2019. Student survey data was used to identify concerns from the student perspective to inform the…

Chile is home to most of the world's largest telescopes, and astronomy research is robust in the country. However, astronomy education in Chile is much less mature. As an effort to increase its quality and coverage, more astronomy K-12 teacher professional development (PD) has been offered in Chile in the last decade, but the results of these…

Implementing the Blended Learning model was identified as having a major influence on achieving learning objectives in the classroom. Blended learning facilitates different times and types of student learning so students can learn according to their needs. The purpose of this study is to define the blended learning effectiveness used at MTs…

Simulations to improve teachers' professional conduct and development have recently increased globally. However, research on the impact on teachers at different professional stages is limited. The current study examined the effects of the simulations carried out at Tel Hai Academic College in the north of Israel in the Pre-service, Internship, and…

A little less than half of the students of higher Ed institutions in the US graduate in four years, and only around 60% finish in six years. Retention rates are also less than ideal. Colleges have been experimenting with a variety of programs and policies to address this issue, especially less selective institutions whose rates are significantly…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of sustainability-focused, cocurricular, interdisciplinary programming for graduate students at creating future leaders in sustainability, i.e. did interdisciplinary sustainability programming further prepared graduate students in sustainability leadership beyond the scope of the…

Using a randomized controlled trial, we investigated changes in both sexual harassment (SH) perpetration and victimization of 2104 middle school students in New York City who received divergent saturation and dosage levels of "Shifting Boundaries," an SH prevention program, which was represented by the length of the program. We assessed…

In the United States, in 2013, 610,042 people were estimated homeless in one night. Improving the effectiveness of homeless assistance programs, particularly aligning programs' practices with their goals, is critical to serving this population. Using a theory that predicts homeless exits, this study presents an innovative, low-cost evaluation tool…

In March 2022, Child Trends contracted with the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) to conduct an independent evaluation of Parent Aware, Minnesota's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for early care and education (ECE) programs. The evaluation, required by the 2021 Minnesota Legislature, includes several research activities…

Many studies have found that supported employment (SE) has effectively helped people with severe mental illness obtain and maintain competitive employment. However, most SE studies have asked "What works?" rather than discerning what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how. It is important to understand the…

Despite the clear and obvious need for adults to be proficient in numeracy, international studies suggest that many continue to struggle in this area. In Ireland, one of the main challenges continues to be the availability of effective adult numeracy education. This is a diverse sector, and little is known about the varied provision of adult…

Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) has been a critical component of School-Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) for decades. Formally called the 'home project', Rufus Stimson developed the concept of SAE in the early 20th century. This work-based learning concept provides students with experiential instruction that strengthens their…

Background: This paper provides insights into 'Policy to Research' (P2R) Fellowships and related programmes within the 'relationship' model of academic-policy engagement, which provide structured opportunities for policy officials to interact with academic researchers. Aims and objectives: Information is provided on P2R Fellowship and similar…

Learner engagement, loosely defined as the extent of a student's cognitive and emotional investment in both academic and co-curricular activities, is argued to make a positive impact on both the student experience at university and student learning outcomes. Universities often implement co-curricular activities and programs to drive learner…

This study investigates the development and evaluation of a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)-based statistics tutor designed to assist students with quantitative analysis methods. The RAG approach was employed to address the well-documented issue of hallucination in Large Language Models (LLMs). A computer tutor was developed that utilizes…