This article describes a flipped classroom activity that requires students to integrate research and audience analysis. The activity uses Twitter as a data source. In the activity, students identify a sample, collect customer tweets, and analyze the language of the tweets in an effort to construct knowledge about an audience's values, needs, and…

The authors have compared students discussing multiple-choice quizzes during peer instruction with and without the initial thinking period before discussion. Video clips of students engaged in peer discussion in groups of three of varying group combinations, a total of 140 different students in all, were compared to students' own experiences…

In professional writing, usability testing investigates how well users can find, understand, and use a document (Lannon). Usability testing involves gathering feedback from users, analyzing how successfully they used the document, and drawing on the test results to change or refine the design. From the authors' experiences as writers and teachers,…

Blended learning has steadily gained in popularity at the higher levels of education. This marks a change in pedagogical approaches from one-directional instruction to an interactive and technology-aided class. However, to manage fluent in-class activities and proper data analysis, real-time and fine-grained data collection activities are still…

The aim of this study was to explore the opinions, perceptions and evaluations of students about their experiences with a question-answer system used on mobile devices in a lecture-based course. Basic qualitative research method was employed in this study to understand how students made sense of their experiences during the instruction. The…

This paper provides a description of practice outlining changes made to English assessment structures for the purpose of facilitating improved teaching and learning. These changes, which included marking, feedback, reporting, and the evaluation of the efficacy of teaching, were implemented across Years 7 to 10 English classes in an independent…

Dialogue with stakeholders has been recognized as an effective educational strategy for addressing complex topics such as climate change. We report here on the Carbon, Energy, and Climate fishbowl discussion series developed by Michigan State University Extension to assist the state's agricultural community in understanding and adapting to the…

Scenario-based learning is an approach for student-centered learning used in the medical and legal fields, but is little used in liberal arts. In this study, I examine students' understanding and application of audience-centered writing techniques after a semester of formal scenario-based essays and problem-based activities. Comparing the grades…

Reversing the traditional classroom activities, in the flipped classroom model students view lectures at home and perform activities during class period inside the classroom. This study investigated the effect of a flipped classroom implementation on college physics students' motivation and understanding of kinematics graphs. A Solomon four-group…

Due to 'pressures' to publish research papers, a group of novice researchers (n = 9) was encouraged to attend a 'Write right' workshop. The participants were asked to fill out a self-report anxiety questionnaire to understand their worries in writing research papers in English. Afterwards, they were asked to write an essay on situations that…

It is now commonly accepted that academic discourses tend to provide venues for participants to interact where the producer needs to display an awareness of the audience, and metadiscourse (MD) is the set of tools enabling the involved parties to establish relationships. MD strategies allow writers to project themselves into their work, signal…

This column explores from a philosophical perspective how sound recording and media create a context different in consequential ways for music education. The author relates the story of his connection to his son through the ukulele in two ways: first, through playing and singing together; and second, through a recording of their music. These…

Over the last few years, classroom response systems (or "clickers") have become increasingly common. Although most systems require students to use a standalone handheld device, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) systems allow students to use devices they already own (e.g., a cell phone, tablet or laptop) to submit responses via text message or…

The teen behavior typically exhibited in school visit groups is often read by museum teachers as resistance or disengagement, when the opposite is more likely the case. This paper attempts to dispel some of the myths around teen behavior and serve as a practical guide to museum educators who desire a deeper, more successful engagement with teen…

The constructivist theory indicates that knowledge is not something finished and complete. However, the individuals must construct it through the interaction with the physical and social environment. The Active Learning is a methodology designed to support the constructivism through the involvement of students in their learning process, allowing…