Little is known about the evaluation practices of environmental educators. Questionnaires and discussion groups with a convenience sample of UK-based practitioners were used to uncover their evaluation methods. Although many report that they are evaluating regularly, this is mainly monitoring numbers of participants or an assessment of enjoyment.…

Reflective learning, a practice carrying relatively high educational value, has been with us for some time. Its popularity has grown to the extent that it is often adopted unquestioningly by educational practitioners. However, there are some important questions to be asked in relation to reflective practice. In reality, its impact on improved and…

Collaborative inquiry learning environments, such as "The Tutorials in Physics Sensemaking," are designed to provide students with opportunities to partake in the authentic disciplinary practices of argumentation and sensemaking. Through these practices, groups of students in tutorial can build shared conceptual understandings of the…

Asynchronous discussion boards are an important element of online courses in higher education settings. Currently, questions persist about the quality of online interaction and discussions in which students are engaged. In addition, online instructors may not be utilizing instructional strategies that are appropriate for web-based learning…

Increasingly, educators from all disciplines are using blogs, social networking sites, VLEs and wikis to encourage academic discourse between students. However, a common problem experienced by educators is how these important learning experiences can be assessed and because of this difficulty many are not assessed. For some time now, I have been…

Picture books about immigration and citizenship rarely portray the issues that children from immigrant families face every day. Though many of these books dealt with border crossings, very few addressed issues of documentation and unequal access to citizenship in any meaningful way. Also, although there are many children's books that deal with the…

Situative and sociocognitive analyses were combined to examine engagement in high-level collaborative learning and its relationship with individuals' cognitions. Video footage of 53 science university students' (nine groups) collaborative learning interactions as they worked through a case-based project was analysed in combination with students'…

A magazine picture collage activity was used with three female counsellor education students as a vehicle to support them in processing their experience as counsellors in training. The use of magazine picture collage in group supervision is described, and the benefits and challenges are presented. The collages served as jumping-off points for…

Video is a common tool to support teacher learning, as it provides opportunity for reflection on teaching practices. Video clubs are one professional learning experience that integrates video, providing teachers an opportunity to collaboratively discuss videos from their teaching. However, few research studies have focused on the characteristics…

This study aimed to understand the impact of an experiential learning activity in a third year undergraduate course on the theory and practice of counselling and psychotherapy at a small Canadian university campus. The experiential learning activity required students to participate in bi-weekly one-to-one discussion groups with international…

Although collaboration is considered a key 21st-century skill, oftentimes it is only assessed through the outcome measures of individual learners. In this paper, we draw upon collaborative cognitive load theory (CCLT) to explain the process of collaboration in learning from the point of view of the collective, rather than an individual learner.…

Many forms of active learning are popular in the college classroom, including case studies, role-plays, simulations, problem-based learning, and some discussion-based activities. Team Meeting 101 is an active learning technique that draws from each of these with the goal of helping students apply academic content and build transferable skills. The…

This study pursues a Habermasian analysis of citizen discussions and of the local public sphere to shed light on renewable energy futures in rural east-central Canada. Using data from group discussions, it pursues an investigation of utterances, validity claims and of discourses. The analysis is supplemented by participant observation of publicly…

This report presents how the learning technologies Discussion Board and PaperShow are incorporated into postgraduate translation modules by means of observing their impact on students' learning. Initially and mainly for administrative reasons as well as being encouraged to make use of the university's virtual learning environment (VLE), I set up…

The conceptualization of normal in schools is problematic. It mediates perceptions about ability, achievement and behavior. Normal implies a hierarchy, naturalizing the idea that some students can achieve better than others. This practice places the blame on the student by locating the problem within the child while failing to consider ways to…