Cognitive effects of chess instruction on students at risk for academic failure was examined. Thirty-eight students, from three elementary schools, participated in this study. The experimental group received a ninety-minute chess lesson once per week over a three-month period; and the control group students regularly attended school activities…

This study investigates the level of students' learning when using e-lectures to increase the flexibility of the learning experience. Two cohorts of students were presented with the same material in lecture format. The control group attended a traditional live lecture, while the treatment group was offered an e-lecture with the same content. Both…

In this study, a desktop virtual reality earth motion system (DVREMS) is designed and developed to be applied in the classroom. The system is implemented to assist elementary school students to clarify earth motion concepts using virtual reality principles. A study was conducted to observe the influences of the proposed system in learning.…

As the number of learning support assistants (also referred to as classroom assistants, teaching aides, auxiliary support and paraeducators) employed in the primary sector continues to increase, questions concerning the contribution they make to raising standards of attainment remain to be answered. This article reports evidence from a small-scale…

One of the challenges of science education is for students to develop scientific knowledge that is personally meaningful and applicable to real-life issues. This article describes a middle-school science intervention fostering adolescents' critical reasoning in the context of HIV by strengthening their conceptual understanding of HIV biology. The…

This study investigated the impact of prior knowledge, writing task, and hypertext format on university students' comprehension of multisource hypertext. Fifty-two students categorized as having high or low prior knowledge studied hypertext consisting of seven component texts on the topic of social influence. Some students were given a summary…

This article evaluates the efficacy of explicit genre-based instruction by sensitizing the ESL learners to the concept of genre. The main questions addressed are: How does sensitizing ESL learners to the rhetorical move structure of a genre, the communicative purposes of these moves, and linguistic features that realize these moves help them to…

This field study investigated the application of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic goal structures in classroom use of computer math games and its impact on students' math performance and math learning attitudes. One hundred and sixty 5th-grade students were recruited and randomly assigned to Teams-Games-Tournament cooperative gaming,…

This research compares a behaviorally based approach for using electronic student response system (SRS) technology with a metacognitive-oriented approach to determine effects on attendance, preparation for class, and achievement. Also examined are the interaction effects of pedagogical approach with self-regulatory and motivational characteristics…

According to recent demographic data, over 1.5 million English learners (EL) attend public and private schools in California. This number is expected to exceed two million by 2015, thus greatly increasing the number of students in need of language and literacy development in English. The situation is similar in many other states where changing…

In 2001, the U.S. Department of Education and the Ministry of Education in China entered into a bilateral partnership to develop a technology-driven approach to foreign language learning that integrated gaming, immersion, voice recognition, problem-based learning tasks, and other features that made it a significant research and development pilot…

Among the different types of experimental design are two general categories: true experimental designs and quasi- experimental designs. True experimental designs include more than one purposively created group, common measured outcomes, and random assignment. Quasi-experimental designs are commonly used when random assignment is not practical or…

A study skills course was evaluated for effects on results from the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) (D. Mealy, 1988). Subjects were students in a freshman level college study skills course. At pretest, there were 29 students in the treatment condition, and by the post-test 25 students remained. In a followup telephone survey, 21…

An intervention pre- and posttest design was used to study conditions that facilitate children's self-regulation of problem solving activities. In two studies, children were trained to solve a three disc Towers of Hanoi problem. After training, they were asked to solve the problem, describe how they solved it, and perform a four disc…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two contextual influences (performance-contingent rewards and proximal goals) on children's task motivation, self-efficacy, and skillful performance after division skill-development training. The sample included 44 children, ranging in age from approximately 9 to 11 years, who were identified…