This author is dropping out from the first college course he has taken in more than 20 years. As a tenured professor, he obviously does not have much to lose from this decision. On the other hand, nobody really seems to care anyway whether he is participating or not. He has been MOOC(h)ing of late. Definition of this lovely neologism? Taking part…

The guidance document "Teaching Large Class Sizes in Physical Education" (NASPE, 2006) suggests incorporating small group work by putting students into small groups to work on a concept, skill, and/or task and using small-sided games that utilize a smaller number of players and a smaller playing area than those of a regulation game. It…

This paper analyzes whether class size has an effect on the prevalence of mental health problems and well-being among adolescents in Swedish schools. We use cross-sectional data collected in year 2008 covering 2755 Swedish adolescents in ninth grade from 40 schools and 159 classes. We utilize different econometric approaches to address potential…

This article introduces a simple, flexible approach to engaging students within large classes, known as ARC (application, response, collaboration). ARC encourages each student's presence and engagement in class; creates a sense of excitement and anticipation; breaks down passivity and anonymity; effectively gains, maintains, and utilizes students'…

The purpose of this review is to systematically uncover relevant studies in the literature that measure the effects of class size on academic achievement. The review will synthesize the effects in a transparent manner and, where possible, the review will investigate the extent to which the effects differ among different groups of students such as…

The purpose of the study was to determine the influence of learning environment on students' academic achievement in mathematics at senior secondary school level. Thus the study investigated some components of learning environment and their possible influence on students' academic achievement in mathematics. A sample of 337 randomly selected SS II…

The purpose of this ongoing, three-year action research study is to explore the digital challenges of student engagement in higher education within the experimental platform of blended learning. Research questions examine the role of digital innovation in supporting diverse learners, as well as building meaningful connections with technology for…

This work has a three-fold purpose. The first is to set out the rationale for an alternative approach for assessing the generalizability of research findings. (It is related to but not equivalent to the CE method.) The second is to formalize this approach through a quantitative model. The third is to apply the approach to the results of the…

At the University of Maine, middle and high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers observed 51 STEM courses across 13 different departments and collected information on the active-engagement nature of instruction. The results of these observations show that faculty members teaching STEM courses cannot simply be…

Applied early adolescent researchers often sample students (Level 1) from within classrooms (Level 2) that are nested within schools (Level 3), resulting in data that requires multilevel modeling analysis to avoid Type 1 errors. Although several articles have been published to assist researchers with analyzing sample data nested at two levels, few…

Using multilevel models, this study examined the effects of student- and course-level variables on monotonic response patterns in student evaluation of teaching (SET). In total, 11,203 ratings taken from 343 general education courses in a Korean four-year private university in 2011 were analyzed. The results indicated that 96% of variance of…

Since 2012, corporations, politicians, journalists and educators have asserted that MOOCs--massive open online courses--are radically changing North American and global education, and for the better. This article offers a counterpoint to the techno-deterministic and optimistic buzz surrounding for-profit MOOCs by contextualizing and analyzing…

Are the nation's 90,000-plus school board members critical players in enhancing student learning? Are they part of the problem? Are they harmless bystanders? Among the takeaways are the following: (1) Board members, by and large, possess accurate information about their districts when it comes to finance, teacher pay, collective bargaining, and…

As online course offerings continue to evolve, researchers have examined many strategies for improving the online learning experience for both the instructor and the student. Asynchronous, online discussions are one of the most common components of online courses. This article provides information about the best practices for facilitating…

In an effort to become more competitive in the global market, Colombia, as many other Latin American countries, has declared English the dominant foreign language to be taught in schools and universities across the country. To support this measure, in the last 16 years, the government, through its National Ministry of Education, has launched a…