Although constructivist theories have shown learning is accelerated by involvement and meaningful lecturer-student and student-student interaction, these ingredients are mostly absent from large attendance lectures. A number of studies have already focused on more active ways of learning in large lecture classrooms, most often by using student…

This paper is a report of an investigation in which mobile technologies were used during large lecture-type sessions in tandem with the Textwall™ software. This online program is able to receive and present messages from students' devices that the lecturer may then share. It also can be used to collect student votes on multiple-choice questions,…

The popularization of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has been shrouded in promises of disruption and radical change in education. In Canada, official partnerships struck by higher education institutions with platform providers such as "Coursera", "Udacity" and "edX" were publicized by dailies and professional…

Free online courses, including Massively Open Online Courses, have great potential to increase the inclusiveness of education, but suffer from very high course dropout rates. A study of 172 K-12 students and 114 K-12 teachers taking the same free, online, summertime programming course finds that student and teacher populations have different…

To help middle school students make better sense of decimals and fraction, the author and an eighth-grade math teacher worked on a 90-minute lesson that focused on representing repeating decimals as fractions. They embedded experimentations and explorations using technology and calculators to help promote students' intuitive and conceptual…

The rapid growth of online education courses, especially Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), has called attention to the issue of student retention and low overall completion rates (Gaebel, 2013). The impact of different modes of delivery on retention has also received attention with a blended learning mode being deemed most effective in…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) describe platforms where users with completely different backgrounds subscribe to various courses on offer. MOOC forums and discussion boards offer learners a medium to communicate with each other and maximize their learning outcomes. However, oftentimes learners are hesitant to approach each other for different…

The goal of this study is to investigate the role of English Language Arts (ELA) teachers' verbal discourse moves in scaffolding adolescent students' argumentative thinking in small group interpretive discussions about literature. Demands related to argumentation may present particular challenges for adolescent students (Biancarosa & Snow,…

The relevance of the problem of organizing blended learning for students is related to the sharpening contradiction between the high potential of this educational technology and the poor methodological elaboration of its use in actual learning practice. With regard to this, the paper is aimed at providing grounds for the methodological system of…

Business educators are concerned with integrating diversity-related topics and seek methods by which to teach them. This paper suggests that as classes become more heterogeneous, the opportunity to examine diverse perspectives and experiences naturally arises in the course of class assignments and activities. The differential experiences of…

A number of researchers and educators have proposed educational methods over the years designed to improve our focus on students, their quality of learning, and experiences through academic and personal development. With a concern for moving forward, some of the more classical methods have been abandoned for the sake of progress, technology, and…

Logistic regression is a popular tool used to build and evaluate binary choice models. It has been applied in a variety of situations and contexts involving dichotomous choice. In the current paper, we apply it to explain and predict the individual choice of adopting online learning through a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), a specific artefact…

There is limited research on the quality of assessment moderation in large classes. Effective moderation practices can improve reliability, as well as reduce marker bias, attenuate prevalence of 'hard' or 'soft' markers, increase student and staff confidence in marking, and enhance the development of staff. This article shares a marking moderation…

This paper is an attempt to describe the situation of higher education in Asia including the challenges it faced as well as the open and distance elearning initiatives by different countries and universities. Data gathering was done through review of online documents and websites as well as documentation of the different initiatives especially by…

This paper seeks to improve our understanding of the challenges faced by teachers and student-teachers in the process of implementing small group work (SGW) in early childhood education (ECE). In light of the discrepancy between the clear benefits of SGW in education--its solid theoretical foundation--and its sparse and poor implementation, we…