Employers across a wide variety of industries say the so-called "soft" skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, communication and collaboration have grown in importance as rapid advancements in technology have transformed their operations. According to a survey from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, problem…

Our population is aging, calling for communities to be more age friendly and younger individuals to be more aware of aging issues that will impact their personal and professional lives. However, colleges provide few opportunities for students to prepare themselves for a more age-diverse world. Drawing on a new general education core curriculum…

For some elementary science teachers, a unit on land and water brings nightmares of dirt and water all over the room. Several Earth science "kits" contain hands-on exercises that allow the students to "get messy" as they manipulate materials; however, these lessons may lack the necessary opportunities for students to ask unique…

Task solving processes and changes in these processes have long been expected to provide valuable information about children's performance in school. This article used electronic tangibles (concrete materials that can be physically manipulated) and a dynamic testing format (pretest, training, and posttest) to investigate children's task solving…

The rapid development of information and communication technologies has enabled the development of interfaces, which allow the recognition of the gestures and movements of the user. These interfaces, due to their affordable prices, are available to a wide range of users. They are called natural user interfaces (NUI). NUI are commonly used in game…

This case study investigates the variety of constructivist approaches to teaching evident in classroom practice. Teaching practices associated with constructivist perspectives have been prevalent in curriculum reforms for some time. Meanwhile, constructivist approaches have been critically discussed in scholarly literature, revealing problematic…

In this interview with Caroline Coward, Library Group supervisor for JPL's Enterprise and Information Systems Engineering Section, Coward discusses her own career journey, the importance of high-impact practices, and what employers--specifically NASA and JPL--look at when hiring interns and recent graduates. Other topics discussed include how a…

Physics and Mathematics are two deeply interlinked domains of Science. Mathematics is considered as the language in which the Physics theories are built by employing mathematical symbols and operations to make equations and representations in the world of Physics completely meaningful. In spite of being the backbone of Physics, the use of…

The value of higher education is a topic of great consideration and discussion, not only for current and future students, but also for legislators, educators, and employers. A college degree is more than a pathway toward advanced knowledge in a given subject; it is a component of a larger outcome beyond a diploma, it's a job. While the scale of…

Lesson observation has been used with pre- and in-service teachers to improve classroom practices. In addition, reflection and criticality can be developed when teachers use evidence from their lessons and engage in collaborative discussions. Therefore, it is essential for pre-service teachers to collect data from their practices and reflect upon…

How to support students in programming learning has been a great research challenge in the last years. To address this challenge, prior works have mainly focused on proposing solutions based on syntactic analysis to provide students with personalized feedback about their grammatical programming errors and misconceptions. However, syntactic…

A qualitative phenomenological study examining the learning activities that take place at a college radio station. The research objective is to understand the social practices that make possible or hinder the construction of learning experiences at KCSS, the campus radio station at California State University, Stanislaus. Document analysis,…

When students are working together, some off-task conversations actually smooth the way to working together more effectively. While many assume that off-task talk is unproductive, our study revealed that students used off-task talk predominantly for productive purposes. We found that off-task talk supported student access to collaboration, and…

Besides learning outcomes, motivation and problem solving skill are the essential indicators for successful learning. Hence, the existence of learning media which considerably follow the advance of technology has been assumed to be able to support the achievement of the indicators mentioned. Thus, the current research aimed at implementing the…

This paper presents a design framework for cases as alternative perspectives (Jonassen in Learning to solve problems: a handbook for designing problem-solving learning environments, 2011a) in the context of K-12 mathematics. Using the design-based research strategy of conjecture mapping, the design of cases for a hypermedia site is described…