The topic of this study is professional development (PD) on Web 2.0 technologies for foreign language teachers and integration of these tools into the language classroom. This research explored the experiences of eighteen teachers of Spanish in grades 7-12 from both rural and urban areas in Nebraska, United States, who participated in a…

We examined the facilitation of shared epistemic agency through a knowledge-building (KB) design that included analytics-supported collective reflective assessment (AsCRA). Forty undergraduate students taking a Liberal Studies course at a university in central China used the promising ideas tool and the knowledge building discourse explorer to…

Needs analysis is the key step to designing relevant and useful courses in English for Specific Purposes (ESP), but finding ways to deliver needs in a motivating and interesting way is also paramount. Therefore, investigating students' motivation to learn ESP is central in needs analysis. Few studies have investigated needs from the perspective of…

The reversal error is a prevalent phenomenon that consists of reversing the relationship between two variables when writing equations from comparison in verbal language. A study with 169 Basque/Spanish bilingual pre-service teachers examined whether this error is mainly due to the students' tendency to employ a direct-translation strategy based on…

This paper offers insight from an informal cross-cultural mentoring experience of course development in higher education framed by the UNESCO Chair on Open Technologies for Open Educational Resources and Open Learning project. The Open Education for a Better World is a tuition-free international online mentoring program established to unlock the…

Today's schools are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before, prompting the need for teachers with the requisite expertise for work with emergent bilingual learners. As students grow in numbers and fill seats in classrooms spanning grades and disciplines, teacher educators must consider ways to prepare an increasing number of…

This study focused on 22 Taiwanese pre-service teachers' perceptions of school-based English camps. Based on the data analysis of the final projects, the questionnaire, and participants' self-evaluation, peer-evaluation, and two in-service English teachers' evaluation, this study has the following major findings. First, participants' perceptions…

Purpose: Founded in sociocultural theories of learning, the authors argue that engaging learners in collaborative knowledge building is critical. When responding to others' ideas, research shows that learners in online settings more frequently focus on surface-level aspects of colleagues' contributions -- sharing, comparing and praising -- rather…

The purpose of this research was to study how teachers perceive teaching presence, what strategies they employ to create it, and the challenges they face in doing so. This was a qualitative research study with purposeful snowball sampling and semi-structured interviewing technique for data collection. The data were thematically analyzed and…

In March 2020, institutions abruptly pivoted to remote instruction, sending students, faculty, and staff away from college campuses in response to COVID-19. In June 2020, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) launched a survey to capture a snapshot of assessment-related changes made during Spring 2020 in response to the…

Today, as educators are transitioning into a new phase of planning for an uncertain summer and fall, they can be more thoughtful about how to deliver high quality online learning. On the positive side, online delivery as an instructional modality is not new. In fact, many colleges and universities have been developing and delivering successful…

This article presents the research findings of a multidisciplinary team's collective research effort at one university over a five-year period as funded by the National Science Foundation's "Improving Undergraduate STEM Education" (IUSE) program. A collaborative learning and retention action research effort at a large Hispanic Serving…

The purpose of this dissertation is to provide an adapted framework for developing self-efficacy in designing and teaching online academic writing courses for international students for whom English is an additional language; this framework, based on Casanave's (2017) three broad categories for decision-making in teaching second language writing…

This commentary examines the rationale behind the use of participatory approaches to the design and development of educational interventions, particularly with respect to the inclusion of students in the process. The perspectives and claims put forth in this special issue are examined against an emerging approach to designing more usable…

Multimedia educational applications convey meanings through several semiotic modes (e.g. text, image, sound, etc.). There is an urgent need for multimedia designers as well as for teachers to understand the meaning potential of these artifacts and discern the communicative purposes they serve. Towards this direction, a hermeneutic semiotic…