Every profession has a set of essential tools for carrying out its work. Airplane mechanics cannot repair engines without sophisticated diagnostics, wrenches, and pliers. Surgeons cannot operate without scalpels and clamps. In contrast, teaching has often been perceived as a profession requiring only students, chalk, and a blackboard in order for…

In the mad dash to complete the plethora of projects that lead up to the public launch of a campaign, it would be easy to start thinking of the kickoff as a goal in itself, but it's merely a mile marker in the marathon of a fundraising campaign that may last five to 10 years. Given that only a fraction of an institution's constituents may attend a…

Coursebook evaluation helps practitioners decide on the most appropriate coursebook to be exploited. Moreover, evaluation process enables to predict the potential strengths and weaknesses of a given coursebook. Checklist method is probably the most widely adopted way of judging coursebooks and there are plenty of ELT coursebook evaluation…

Audio-visual learning technologies offer great opportunities in the development of students' analytical and projective abilities. These technologies can be used in classroom activities and for homework. This article discusses the features of audiovisual media texts use in a series of social sciences and humanities in the University curriculum.

In the fall of 2013, a parents' group formed to protest the new Common Core based mathematics textbook recently adopted by their school district. Quickly allying with teachers, the new coalition began to, "hammer," the district to drop the Common Core and return to more traditional texts and pedagogies. They did so by speaking at…

Instructional designers must design and develop online learning environments that present the content in a way that learners will find important and useful. Faculty and novice designers are being tasked to design and develop online learning environments without having the necessary knowledge or experience in instructional design in order to select…

This study explores teachers' thinking about practical work, especially in regards to the types of practical work they privilege in their teaching of chemistry to support students in their learning. It seeks to investigate the view that practical work, especially the type of practical work selected, is "unthinkingly" and…

This paper describes the prerequisites for development in the area of cross-cultural multimedia didactics. This approach is based on research studies of differences between mentalities, ways of working with educational information, culturally-specific teaching methods and teaching techniques that determine differentiated approaches to the choice…

Among the several forms of accommodations used in the assessment of English language learners (ELLs), language-based accommodations are the most effective in making assessments linguistically accessible to these students. However, there are significant challenges associated with the implementation of many of these accommodations. This article…

The author defines and describes authentic materials and discusses their benefits--citing the Input Hypothesis and the Output Principle in support of such materials--as well as some challenges of using authentic materials. Five categories of authentic materials are presented, and sources for materials and ways to use them in the EFL classroom are…

The growth of technology and the inclusion of "digital natives" as students in the education world have created a demand pull for the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education. Dominant among these tools have been wikis, blogs and discussion boards. Distance education experts view the use of these tools as differentiators when compared to…

Digital Storytelling offers many advantages for language learning, especially within a project-based framework. In this article, the use of Digital Micro-Narratives is proposed as particularly useful for second language learners at the novice level. As a sub-genre of Digital Storytelling, Digital Micro-Narratives focus more on frequently updated…

Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open University (BRAOU), the first distance teaching university in India, was a great educational event. It started a new chapter in the history of India's distance higher education. The general objects this research studies are: (1) to identify the information and communication technologies used in open distance education…

It is a cliché, but also a fundamental fact that we live in a world where globalization and international challenges, opportunities and relationships play an increasing role. However, how have these changing conditions affected the content of school history? To what degree have curricula and textbooks addressed these challenges? Is the main focus…

Based on research about humor, foreign languages, and instructional design, in the current study we examined whether successful learning is related to using different types of media. We compared the comprehension of an economic concept in novices (N = 82) under three conditions: a Wikipedia article, a funny, and a serious YouTube video. The media…