This paper reports the results of a study into the quality of peer feedback provided by students within a computerised peer-assessment environment. The study looks at the creation of a "feedback index" that represents the quality of an essay based upon the feedback provided during a peer-marking process and identifies a significant…

Who are the people who become positive educational leaders? This essay presents WICS as a model of positive educational leadership. WICS stands for "w"isdom, "i"ntelligence, "c"reativity, "s"ynthesized. Each of these elements is asserted to constitute one of the elements of educational leadership. Regrettably, our society is organized around a…

The author contends that the title of this collection, "Music and the Racial Imagination," is provocative. It simultaneously does several things. It brings together "music" and "race," which have not previously been given equal emphasis in musicology, and then links these two things with imagination. The title also creates an imagined space where…

This essay critically highlights the main features of a study that attaches importance to the concepts of time and optimism and their effects on the achievement and goals of high and low achievers in a North American and a Brazilian context. The focus on the time factor that serves as a leitmotif throughout the study gives this work its…

In this article we investigate the use of latent semantic analysis (LSA), critiquing systems, and knowledge building to support computer-based teaching of English composition. We have built and tested an English composition critiquing system that makes use of LSA to analyze student essays and compute feedback by comparing their essays with…

In 1918, just one year before the founding of American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), Thorstein Veblin wrote, "In one shape or another, this problem of adjustment, reconciliation or compromise between the needs of higher learning and the demands of the business enterprise is forever present in the deliberations of the university…

Studies done in L1/L2 English settings have revealed the negative effects of writing anxiety on both learner motivation and academic achievement and teachers' attitudes towards writing and the practices they use in their own classes. The present study aims to find out the effects of peer feedback on the writing anxiety of Turkish prospective…

In an effort to assess student writing in a way that reflects current views of writing (i.e., as a social process supported by the interaction of a number of cognitive sub-processes), and yet still seeks to determine what students can do independently, it has become a common practice to include timed essays in student portfolios. However, this…

Expository hypertexts may contain specific types of signals such as navigable topical overviews and hyperlinks that map conceptual relationships between text contents. Two experiments with German university students (N = 130, 75% female, mean age 25 years) were conducted to test the hypothesis that hypertext-specific signals particularly support…

While peer review is a common practice in college composition courses, there is little consistency in approach and effectiveness within the field, owing in part to the dearth of empirical research that investigates peer-review processes. This study is designed to shed light on what a peer reviewer actually reads and attends to while providing…

Language arts teachers participated in an inservice program, The Writer's Clinic, and evaluated their students' improvement in writing ability using holistic essay scoring techniques. Seventh and eighth grade students were administered an essay composition pretest in December; the same essay topic was given as the post test in May. Students were…

The 10th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2017) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Optics Velley Kingdom Plaza Hotel, Wuhan, Hubei Province, in China. This years conference features two invited talks by: Dr. Jie Tang, Associate Professor with the Department of Computer…

Based on empirical research and qualitative analysis, this paper aims to explore the effects of L1 use on L2 vocabulary teaching. The results show that, during L2 vocabulary teaching process, the proper application of L1 can effectively facilitate the memorization of new words, and the bilingual method (both English explanation and Chinese…

This study investigated student engagement in class discussions in a university-level, literature-based writing class. The research questions were 1) Does multiple-source learning provide a new lens for the observation of reflective teaching and learning practices? 2) Is there evidence that shows that the practices adopted by one teacher actually…

Background: Recent changes in higher education in the UK have led to much discussion about the performance of men and women students with different methods of assessment. Aim: To see whether or not there were differences between the marks awarded to men and women final-year psychology students as a function of the modes of assessment used. Method:…