This article introduces biomimicry as an approach to STEM learning with a strong real-world application. It provides an introduction to biomimicry itself and some of the key principles behind using biomimicry as an approach to design. It draws upon almost three years of work within the BioLearn project, which is working with secondary schools in…

Awareness of students' learning status, and maintaining students' focus and attention during class are important issues in classroom management. Several observation instruments have been designed for human observers to document students' engagement in class, but the processes are time-consuming and laborious. Recently, with the development of…

Students' opinions are the most essential source to enhance the quality of education and educational services in Open and Distance education (ODE) Systems. How to access and analyze students' real opinions is a problem for ODE institutions. The purpose of the present study is to conduct a sentiment analysis (SA) on the collected Turkish tweets…

Many introductory astronomy courses include concepts related to basic stellar properties. In general, these are concepts that originate from the human perception of starlight. This observational aspect is not easy to incorporate in the classroom. We explore if these concepts could be developed using the built-in data in a planetarium software.…

Soft skills are interpersonal, social, and emotional competencies, transversal to various fields of knowledge and life. In the Knowledge Age, soft skills play an essential role in the differentiation of human work. Nevertheless, in design education, there are still few studies on soft skills. This study brings a conceptual map of soft skills in…

When conceived of as both a research strategy and mode to present findings, vignettes can be combined with various qualitative methodologies in higher education research. Rather than being a discipline unto itself, higher education research is best understood as a multi and cross-disciplinary field of study that, we contend, is made richer by its…

Individuals with ASD have been shown to have different pattern of functional connectivity. In this study, brain activity of participants with many and few autistic traits, was recorded using an fNIRS device, as participants preformed an interpersonal synchronization task. This type of task involves synchronization and functional connectivity of…

Evidence shows that what students study matters as much as, if not more than, where they study. Program-level measures can provide important data on student outcomes, which will allow policymakers to hold institutions and programs that receive federal funding accountable. This fact sheet highlights some of the most frequently discussed measures…

The study of mind-wandering is popular since it is linked to the emotional problems and working/learning performance. In terms of education, it impacts comprehension during learning which affects academic success. Therefore, we sought to develop a machine learning model for an embedded portable device that can categorize mind-wandering state to…

This quantitative correlational non-experimental study examined the predictable relationship between the ACCESS for English Language Learners scale score and the Georgia Milestones English Language Arts (GMAS-ELA) standardized assessment for reclassified fifth-grade English language learners during the 2018-2019 school year. The problem addressed…

Inspired by a "whole child" framing, the current study takes a "whole classroom" perspective to consider classroom practice. Study aims included: (1) presenting a systematic video-based observational coding strategy to concurrently consider practice domains that have implications for learning--cognitive instruction, classroom…

Teachers' conceptions of assessment are a significant indicator of teacher assessment literacy. This study contextualized pre-service teachers' conceptions of assessment in Chinese second language education. An exploratory factor analysis generated eight first-order factors and the following confirmatory factor analysis found a hierarchical model,…

Programming skills are increasingly important to the current digital economy, yet these skills have long been regarded as challenging to acquire. A central challenge in learning programming skills involves the simultaneous use of multiple component skills. This article investigates why students struggle with integrating component skills--a…

As Chinese shows both satellite- and verb-framed properties (Slobin, 2004; Talmy, 2012, 2016), it provides a unique lens through which to observe the extent of first-language (L1) typological influence in second language (L2) acquisition of motion expressions. This study has dual purposes. First, it extends Wu's (2016) investigation on motion…

In 2006-2007, California revised its English language proficiency (ELP) assessment, the California English Language Development Test (CELDT), which resulted in more stringent criteria and higher cut scores for meeting proficiency. Using regression discontinuity designs and a difference-in-differences approach, this study examines the effects of…