This paper describes a component of a larger cross-national comparative study on faculty development for teaching international students. Here we describe the study and report preliminary findings that offer analyses of the informal and formal means by which Italian and US university instructors enhance the knowledge and skills they find necessary…

Much attention has been devoted to the positive effects that instructor understanding of the principles and practices of sound assessment can have on learning outcomes and measurement of these outcomes. However, less has been written about the potential benefits of increasing students' understanding of assessment. This paper describes exploratory…

Online learning has become increasingly popular in recent years. This interest in online education has brought about new learning opportunities for both educators and learners. Technology has enabled higher education institutions the ability to provide quality education reaching learners that might otherwise be impossible. When developing online…

Teacher research (practitioner inquiry) is an effective form of professional development for middle level teachers. Through teacher research, classroom teachers develop the skills needed to demonstrate mastery of the performance standards for middle level master teacher candidates. Using well-established research methods, middle level educators…

Any of the key concepts that students need to know about area measurement are covered in the third-grade expectations detailed in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) (CCSSI 2010). However, making sense of area measurement is not always an easy task for students; it takes time. Researchers have found that young children often…

Employees' informal learning in the workplace warrants more attention, and such learning could benefit from the latest mobile technologies such as Web 2.0 applications, which have increasingly been utilized and have the potential to enhance learning outcomes. This multiple-case study examined the impact of mobile Web 2.0 applications on…

Context: Clinical experiences are an integral part of athletic training education and are where students gain the hands-on, practical knowledge and skills necessary to provide quality patient care in the field. However, some clinical education experiences may not allow athletic training students to become clinically integrated. Objective: To…

The goal of this paper is to illustrate how the promotion of 21st Century process skills can be used to enhance student learning and workplace skill development: thinking, problem solving, collaboration, communication, leadership, and management. As an illustrative case, fashion merchandising and design students conducted research for a…

Research on the effectiveness of introductory programming environments often relies on post-test measures and attitudinal surveys to support its claims; but such instruments lack the ability to identify any explanatory mechanisms that can account for the results. This paper reports on a study designed to address this issue. Using Noss and Hoyles'…

Recent calls for change in teacher preparation programs stress the importance of field experience and the need for preservice teachers to have ample opportunities for peer collaboration and feedback. The paired placement model, with two preservice teachers working with one cooperating teacher, has shown to provide many benefits. However, the…

The increasing popularity and accessibility of affordable computer-mediated communication is rapidly advancing alternative forms of message transmission into market sectors, such as education. The focus of this article is an exploratory multi-case study of rich learning experiences of Windows into Teaching and Learning (WiTL) participants enrolled…

Government schools in Abu Dhabi, as part of widescale educational reforms undertaken in the whole of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have undergone significant change since 2007 across cycles and across subjects including science. Science had been taught historically in the UAE using fairly traditional "chalk and talk", teacher-centered…

Learning experience has been one of the most debated aspects of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Various perceptions on learning experience offered by MOOCs have led to many claims about the quality of these courses and their potential impact on higher education in both developed and developing countries. This paper discusses, from a learner's…

This paper reports on the introduction and use of e-learning technologies to help students study a school subject. The research intervention is located within a relatively resourced school in South Africa with students largely coming from one racial group. The choice of the school enabled the researchers to focus on investigating the effects of…

This paper reports on the experiences of newcomers at the 36th Annual MERGA Conference. The paper applies Wenger's (1998) social learning theory to explore the kinds of feedback that might assist newcomers. Questionnaire responses to describe the experience of ten newcomers and interview responses from five of the ten are reported. The…