To a growing student population for whom smartphone and Internet use started in their early childhood, social media and popular culture can be effective tools to mitigate potential anxiety and alienation students may feel when taking a theory course. This paper offers strategies and insight on the endeavor of utilizing both popular and social…

Recent developments in technology allow instructors to design meaningful customized homework assignments that enhance student performance, while reducing the time and resources required for grading and feedback. In particular, online assignments allow the instructor to utilize various setting options including auto-grading, number of attempts, and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is sharing out basic guidelines and examples from an extended collaboration to move educators move online while avoiding synchronous meetings. "gPortfolios" are public (to the class) pages where students write responses to carefully constructed engagement routines. Students then discuss their work with…

This brief summarizes our findings from a review of COVID-19 response plans of 477 school districts across the country. Key findings include: (1) 1 in 3 school districts have been communicating an expectation that teachers will provide instruction while schools remain closed; (2) Urban and suburban districts have been significantly more likely…

This study examined the effect of feedback, feed up (comments on goals and students' success in achieving goals) and feed forward (comments on the next step in learning during the semester) on writing motivation, writing self-efficacy, and writing anxiety. Two hundred and ten female intermediate language learners (age[subscript mean] = 17.2) were…

We report results of a national survey of secondary teachers who teach special education and/or English language arts in the United States. A total of 50 teachers from 27 different states completed the survey. In the survey, we asked teachers about their experience delivering distance and in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. We…

This study explores how students produce their own mini videos using the target language to share experiences and communicate with native speakers. Multimodality is used as a theoretical approach. Class observations and in-depth interviews were used for data collection, which was analysed by theme. The research results indicate that students deem…

Machines have a long-demonstrated ability to find statistical relationships between qualities of texts and surface-level linguistic indicators of writing. More recently, unlocked by artificial intelligence, the potential of using machines to identify content-related writing trait criteria has been uncovered. This development is significant,…

Mathematics methods texts are important resources for supporting preservice teachers' learning. Methods instructors routinely assign readings from texts. Yet, anecdotally and also based on reading compliance literature, many students report that they do not read assigned readings. Within this paper we briefly describe the findings from a survey of…

A recent scientific discipline, bioinformatics, defined as using informatics for the study of biological problems, is now a requirement for the study of biological sciences. Bioinformatics has become such a powerful and popular discipline that several academic institutions have created programs in this field, allowing students to become…

Courses: This activity is designed specifically for public-speaking courses, but it could be used in the general introductory communication course. It also holds potential for use in persuasion, argumentation, or strategic communication courses. Objectives: This activity helps students understand audience as a more complicated concept--one that…

How can secondary English teachers assign and teach argumentative writing to foreground its significance for students and their life trajectories? This article compares three approaches -- formalist, structured process and conversational entry -- in the light of this aim. Through analysis of exemplar assignments, the comparison illustrates the…

This paper has two parts. In the first part, intended for physics students as well as for engineering students whose primary interest is not physics, a new lesson related to shadow properties is given as a part of lectures on light. The effects resulting from a shadow 'motion' observed on a screen were looked into. The relationship between the…

Many undergraduate research capstones require research papers that include a literature review. This study assessed whether modifications made to teaching of a literature review resulted in significant changes to quantified measures of assessment. Literature reviews in the final economics capstone research papers of 212 students from the 2005-2016…

Consumer insights are all around us. Yet it can be difficult for students to examine everyday consumption practices and see how this understanding has application. Using the simple premise of a favorite family recipe, students learn how insight can be hidden in plain sight. Beginning with conducting an in-depth interview, the assignment gives…