Within the existing system of education, student work rarely has any value beyond the particular course that it is created for. The work is graded and then usually discarded. The authors describe in this article a way that student work can be systematically made available for use by others beyond the immediate learning context within which it is…

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the effects of a cooperative learning strategy in physical education on academic learning time, the percentage of correct trials, the total number of trials, and the number of correct trials. A cooperative learning strategy, PACER (Performer and Coach Earn Rewards), was implemented in a sixth-grade…

Why are children off task? What is going on in classrooms where a majority of children are off task? In this study we analyzed primary-grade classroom literacy instruction in which there was considerable off-task behavior. Using Turner and Paris's frame for understanding student motivation in the classroom, we analyzed 73 activity settings where…

The current study evaluates whether a mentoring program can increase self-esteem and internal locus of control in underrepresented community college students. The primary goal of the mentoring program was to facilitate Compton Community College (CCC) students' successful transfer to a four-year university by fostering relationships with mentors…

In a very large Introductory Statistics class, i.e. in a class of more than 300 students, instructors may hesitate to apply active learning techniques, discouraged by the volume of extra work. In this paper two such activities are presented that evoke student involvement in the learning process. The first is group peer teaching and the second is…

This paper describes research that explored the question of whether or not it is possible to characterise and teach a single type of educationally productive talk. We analysed and compared the quality of children's interactional strategies when jointly working on a reasoning task and a psycholinguistic task. The latter involved writing an…

As recent second language acquisition (SLA) studies have shown, the negotiation of linguistic items such as vocabulary, verb tenses, and grammar rules with different types of interlocutors--native speakers (NSs) and advanced non-native speakers (NNSs) of English--seems to facilitate second language development among students. Findings from…

The authors develop a framework for the design of tools to mediate collaboration intended to lead to learning. We identify two categories of media that are common in computer-supported collaborative learning and software in general: communication media and information media. These two types of media are then mapped onto two types of social…

This paper describes a multi-agent approach that aims at supporting learners involved in a collective activity. We consider pedagogical situations where students have to explicitly define the articulation of their collective work and then achieve the different tasks they have defined. Our objective is to support these students by taking some of…

Purpose: Investigating the social structure in online courses helps in designing for and facilitating student support and retention. Aims to provide data showing how course design and use of social software technologies provided social and collaborative learning opportunities for online students. Design/methodology/approach: A study of…

This qualitative study examined students' descriptions of their experiences in classroom groups in an interdisciplinary arts and sciences program. Using a grounded theory approach, we found that students used descriptive names to navigate complex group demands. Their reductionist strategies interfered with learning, prevented flexibility, and…

The study examined the integration of science and mathematics methods courses and preservice teachers' understanding of constructivism. The participants were 50 preservice teachers who were enrolled in early childhood education mathematics and science methods courses, and an early childhood practicum. The two methods courses were integrated and…

A peer tutoring scheme has been introduced into the Department of Engineering at the University of Liverpool to help 2nd year undergraduate students tackle conceptual design problems. Conceptual design is an iterative process consisting of a series of generative and evaluative stages, which gradually converge on a preferred conceptual solution.…

The authors investigated the microlevel processes of collaborative reasoning in heterogeneous peer dyads working on an open-design task in elementary geometry. Special attention was paid to the nature of student social interaction, problem-solving strategies, and mathematical language and how they shape collaborative problem-solving processes.…

In hundreds of schools across the U.S., cooperative learning has helped administrators and teachers increase academic achievement and equip students with the ability to speak and work across lines of race, class and gender. Cooperative learning encourages education in a democratic environment. Student interaction at every level of school fosters…