The World Café (TWC), used as an effective conversational tool around the world, shares several tenets with other participatory approaches to learning and development. It has not been critiqued, however, for its insufficient attention to reflexivity, power differentials, and structural inequalities within its process, specifically in relation to…

Although large classes in and of themselves are pragmatic for universities, they can be challenging for both students and instructors. The purpose of this study was to investigate pedagogical strategies that instructors teaching large classes can utilize to create positive student-instructor interactions to counter these challenges. Both…

A new student orientation is arranged to assist students in their adjustment to college. To do so, it is essential for the program to provide students an opportunity to connect to other students, instructors, academic advisors, and the university. Recently, there are several mobile applications developed to promote collaboration and interaction…

Large class learning is a reality that is not exclusive to the first-year experience at midsized, comprehensive universities; upper-year courses have similarly high enrollment, with many class sizes greater than 200 students. Research into the efficacy and deficiencies of large undergraduate classes has been ongoing for more than 100 years, with…

The informationalized knowledge sharing of MOOCs not only promotes the change of teaching concept and the reform of teaching methodology, but also provides a new opportunity for the teaching resource integration and sharing between different universities. The present study has constructed an e-Portfolio-based model for the application and sharing…

This paper investigates the characteristics and behaviour of learners on nine Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on the FutureLearn platform in 2014 and 2015. FutureLearn's social constructivist approach, which emphasizes learning through social interaction, makes the focus on forum posting within these MOOCs particularly appropriate. This study…

Although constructivist theories have shown learning is accelerated by involvement and meaningful lecturer-student and student-student interaction, these ingredients are mostly absent from large attendance lectures. A number of studies have already focused on more active ways of learning in large lecture classrooms, most often by using student…

This paper is a report of an investigation in which mobile technologies were used during large lecture-type sessions in tandem with the Textwall™ software. This online program is able to receive and present messages from students' devices that the lecturer may then share. It also can be used to collect student votes on multiple-choice questions,…

The popularization of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has been shrouded in promises of disruption and radical change in education. In Canada, official partnerships struck by higher education institutions with platform providers such as "Coursera", "Udacity" and "edX" were publicized by dailies and professional…

Free online courses, including Massively Open Online Courses, have great potential to increase the inclusiveness of education, but suffer from very high course dropout rates. A study of 172 K-12 students and 114 K-12 teachers taking the same free, online, summertime programming course finds that student and teacher populations have different…

The rapid growth of online education courses, especially Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), has called attention to the issue of student retention and low overall completion rates (Gaebel, 2013). The impact of different modes of delivery on retention has also received attention with a blended learning mode being deemed most effective in…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) describe platforms where users with completely different backgrounds subscribe to various courses on offer. MOOC forums and discussion boards offer learners a medium to communicate with each other and maximize their learning outcomes. However, oftentimes learners are hesitant to approach each other for different…

A simple and economical experimental setup is described that enables multiple individuals or groups within a laboratory class to measure the thermal melting of double stranded DNA simultaneously. The setup utilizes a basic spectrophotometer capable of measuring absorbance at 260 nm, UV plastic cuvettes, and a stirring hot plate. Students measure…

In this article, the authors provide a new approach to massive open online course: project based case learning. Although there are many online teaching websites, such as Coursera and Edx, most of the courses are video based. That is, students learn knowledge through watching lecture videos. This method may apply to theoretical subjects, but for…

The relevance of the problem of organizing blended learning for students is related to the sharpening contradiction between the high potential of this educational technology and the poor methodological elaboration of its use in actual learning practice. With regard to this, the paper is aimed at providing grounds for the methodological system of…