Empirical evaluations of practical teaching units integrating content and language in higher education are rare and deserve more attention. The current article aims to narrow this gap by providing an empirical study of an integrating content and language in higher education (ICLHE, Smit & Dafouz, 2012) teaching module. It investigates the…

The use of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to expand students' access to higher education has raised questions regarding the extent to which this course model can provide and assess authentic, higher level student learning. In response to this need, MOOC platforms have begun utilizing automated essay scoring (AES) systems that allow…

Having used sustained silent reading (SSR) to motivate reluctant readers in secondary level classes, Steve Gardiner uses the writing equivalent of SSR with secondary students who he wants to motivate and strengthen as authors. He describes the masterpiece assignment he devised and uses with students. Students work all school year on an extended…

This article examines methods of teaching students immersed in online media to write extended persuasive text. Specific examples for the writing classroom are outlined to engage students in persuasive writing through the use of online media. The persuasive writing examples are linked to the Common Core State Standards.

Watching images through mass media presents a challenge for understanding the complexities of different cultures within and outside the United States. Photographic images, in particular, are ubiquitous in our mediated world, populating old and interactive media and many times serving to perpetuate established codes of understanding and action.…

Through a student/teacher classroom conflict, the author explores ways adults produce student writers as vulnerable. Drawing on post-structural concepts of adolescence, identity production, interrogation, and vulnerability, the author details how an English teacher invited students to perform vulnerability in personal narratives about issues like…

Writers usually need iterations of revisions and edits during their writings. To better understand the process of rewriting, we need to know what has changed be-tween the revisions. Prior work mainly focuses on detecting corrections within sentences, which is at the level of words or phrases. This paper proposes to detect revision changes at the…

This study adopted a longitudinal retrospective case study approach to investigate Chinese business students' transitional learning experience in a problem-based learning (PBL) course with innovative assessment practices. The study focused on students' beliefs and strategy use in a constructively aligned PBL course for business communication.…

In the present study I examine meaning-making as an integral aspect of successful writing assignments in political science. Results of a semester-long quasi-experimental pilot study show that meaning-making writing tasks help students in Introduction to American Politics courses become more politically engaged through the inculcation of civic…

While the United States has a divisive history around the separation of church and state in public school, current national and state teaching standards do include curricular objectives related to the study of religion. This paper focuses on the ways a diverse group of sixth-grade public schoolchildren engaged with religious content in their…

The importance of direct explicit instruction in secondary schools has been shown to improve student learning outcomes across the curriculum. The question then becomes one of whether adapting direct explicit instruction in post-secondary institutions would have the same impact on student grades. Graham and Perin (2007) identified eleven elements…

In this commentary Matias Laine reviews the vivid paper written by Rob Gray (2013) who discusses his view of how sustainability is positioned within accounting education and how accounting educators can directly approach sustainability in their teaching. Laine notes many of the aspects that Gray considers important reflect the starting point of…

This study describes journalism students' value making of social research methods, such as sampling, data gathering strategies and quantitative and qualitative data analysis, by using a mixed-­method approach to analyze 260 written reflection assignments. In their reflections, 26 student participants assessed the value of their new knowledge of…

Students in Chemistry 254: Organic Chemistry for Majors were required to write a paper about an organic name reaction. Before turning in this assignment, students had the option of attending a one-hour library instruction session covering SciFinder, sources for spectra, ACS Style, and print resources about organic name reactions. Twenty-five…

We examined how writing cover letters to the instructor influenced final papers in research methods courses. After receiving instructor feedback on drafts of each section of an American Psychological Association style research paper throughout the semester, students in two classes wrote cover letters to the instructor explaining how the instructor…