The authors describe an assignment in which first-year university students develop a sense of community by discussing personally relevant topics via the shared experience enabled by the social media tools Twitter and Paper.li. A list of references and suggested readings is included.

Examined in this study is the relationship between student perceptions in blended learning courses and their in-course achievement. The research was conducted at a large urban university that embarked on a major initiative to scale-up blended learning across its campus. Student perceptions (N = 577) were assessed in four areas deemed important to…

Using a quasi-experimental one-group, pretest-posttest design with non-random convenience sampling, the researchers assessed 61 advanced standing MSW students who matriculated at a rural intermountain Northwest school of social work. Changes in students' knowledge and attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people were measured using…

This paper examines factors associated with middle school students' perceptions of the quality of the sexual health education (SHE) they received at school. Participants were 478 predominately White young people (256 girls, 222 boys) in grades 6-8 who completed a survey assessing their demographic characteristics; dating and sexual experience; and…

Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) often handle chaotic life-and-death situations that require higher-order thinking skills. Improving the pass rate of EMT students depends on many factors, including the use of proven and effective teaching methods. Results from recent research about effective teaching have suggested that the instructional…

This research examines the debate surrounding the site selection of several New Jersey community colleges. It takes into account the 1960s time period in which they were founded. The process to establish a community college commenced with each county establishing a committee to assess whether or not there was a need to institute a county college…

This roadmap was designed to provide guidance to the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) school administrators in implementing blended learning programs in their own schools. Over the 2012-13 school year, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) worked with 8 NYCDOE Lab Schools, each with its own blended learning…

Spark NH is New Hampshire's governor-appointed Early Childhood Advisory Council (hereafter called "Council"), a private-public partnership that works to create a comprehensive, coordinated system of programs and supports for young children and their families. Workforce development is an essential Council strategy for improving early…

Using a qualitative content analysis approach, this study reviewed 47 published studies and research on online teaching and learning since 2008, primarily focusing on how theories, practices and assessments apply to the online learning environment. The purpose of this paper is to provide practical suggestions for those who are planning to develop…

On-going bilingual programs without regard to needs analysis; little research on the actual effects of CLIL in Colombia and vague awareness or knowledge about the necessary considerations for effective CLIL programs, underpin the need to address a particular issue of curriculum as it is summative assessment. This small scale study takes place in a…

The issue of teaching pragmatics in foreign and second language classrooms has received a lot of attention in the recent years. Its origins can be dated back to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSRAP) led by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) and the research on interlanguage speech acts that followed (for a comprehensive…

Engaging students in controversial issues provides numerous benefits for developing democratic citizenship. A wide variety of pathways and challenges exist to their discussion in classrooms, many of which are based upon societal and cultural context. This study explores the context of Guam and maps the issues of controversy within categories of…

A critical aspect of teacher education is gaining pedagogical content knowledge of how to teach science for conceptual understanding. Given the time limitations of college methods courses, it is difficult to touch on more than a fraction of the science topics potentially taught across grades K-8, particularly in the context of relevant pedagogies.…

An experiment was developed to determine if cognitive learning strategies improved standardized university business exam results. Previous studies revealed that factors such as prior ability, age, gender, and culture predicted a student's Major Field Test in Business (MFTB) score better than course content. The experiment control consisted of…

This article examines how political discourse, language ideologies, recent Chinese curriculum reforms, and their representations in the media are inextricably related. Using the "Speak Mandarin Campaign" as background for the inquiry, I focus on textual features of the various media sources, TV advertisements, campaign slogans, official…