Whenever Mr. Henderson's 3rd grade students had a question that he couldn't immediately answer or that seemed off-topic, he asked them to write the question on a sticky note and place it on a poster dubbed the "Parking Lot." His intention was to find time later to answer those questions, but too often, he said, the parking lot…

The authors used a withdrawal design to evaluate an intervention designed to decrease interruptions during small-group instruction in a Kindergarten class. A new rule was put into place; during teacher-led small-group instruction, those not in the small group were required to address questions to designated student leaders, as opposed to…

This study presents a sequential analysis of the enactment of teacher identity in closing disagreements among students in small group peer interactions in an advanced academic writing class. In doing so, it discusses: (a) the micro-details of how oppositional stances and opinions are constructed, challenged and/or defended; (b) the sequential…

MOOCs are a recent phenomenon, although given their impact, they have been subject to a large debate. Several questions have been raised by researchers and educators alike regarding their sustainability, both economically and as an efficient mode of education provision. In this paper we contribute to this discussion by presenting a case study of…

Much of the literature and the academic discussion about institutional strategic planning of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) has been centred on the U.S. context. Literature on MOOCs in Europe is still developing and just recently some empirical studies were conducted. However, these studies are not comparable, and it is hard to learn about…

With a view to improving the quality of class discussions of assigned articles, I implemented a new way of organizing small group seminars in an undergraduate early childhood education course. The seminars were led by student facilitators and had a balance of accountability and autonomy. Mid-way through the course, the students reflected…

While it is clear that engagement between students and instructors positively affects learning outcomes, a number of factors make such engagement difficult to achieve in large-enrollment introductory courses. This has led to pessimism among some education professionals regarding the degree of engagement possible in these courses. In this paper we…

In response to the current reform of college English teaching, a case study of Chinese Mongolian students in English language teaching under the influence of MOOCs is carried out in an attempt to examine the efficacy of the integration of information technology into English language teaching. After a brief introduction of the teaching mode of…

The purpose of this two-year quantitative study was to determine the usefulness of the micro-blogging tool Twitter in large classes for improving the students' sense of community and belonging. Three instructors of large classes were recruited to test the outcomes of using Twitter as a learning tool, one each from the Departments of Geography and…

The authors describe a collaborative group-testing strategy implemented and studied in undergraduate science classes. This project investigated how the assessment strategy relates to student performance and perceptions about collaboration and focused on two sections of an undergraduate biotechnology course taught in separate semesters.

Joen Bettmann's depiction of practical life exercises as character-building reveals how caring, careful, and independent work leads to higher self-esteem, more concern for others, better understanding for academic learning, and a self-nurturing, respectful classroom community. Particular aspects of movement and silence exercises bring out what…

This article describes and evaluates an implementation of team-based learning (TBL) in a large (180 student) section of a U.S. government course. The author argues that TBL presents an opportunity for instructors of large classes to increase student engagement with the course content as well as student interaction with the instructor and with each…

Researchers have highlighted engagement as a critical component of effective interventions for students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet there is limited research related to engagement in school-age children with ASD. This descriptive study was designed to examine joint engagement and its relationship with classroom factors and student…

This paper introduces several educational materials developed by ICER (Innovation Center for Educational Resource) of Kyushu University Library and considers about what are better designs for mobile educational materials through their development experiences and their investigations about its learning effectiveness. The introduced materials are…

The goal of this study was to gain in-depth understanding about nonnative English-speaking students' lived experiences with massive open online courses (MOOCs) in a regular college classroom. Phenomenological methodology was used to examine those experiences in 24 Korean college students. Individual interviews, an open-ended online survey,…