This study investigated the effects of feedback providing improvement strategies and a reflection assignment on students' writing motivation, process, and performance. Students in the experimental feedback condition (n = 41) received feedback including improvement strategies, whereas students in the control feedback condition (n = 41) received…

In this article we describe a curricular strategy that improves the full range of skillsets critical to capstone success. Improved Capstone (ICap) was developed and implemented across the thermo-fluids topical area in the undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Technology Program at the University of Hartford. ICap experiential courses sequentially…

A number of free Web-based tools are available for distance librarians to create presentations and online assignments. The relative merits of presentation tools like Dabbleboard, Jing, Prezi, Tildee, 280 Slides, and Glogster, and classroom tools like Make Beliefs Comix, Picviewer, Photopeach, and Wordle are assessed for ease of use by distance…

The ability to think critically is an important trait of all members of society. With today's multinational, multicultural, complex issues, citizens must be able to sift through large amounts of various data to make intelligent decisions. Thinking critically must be a focus of higher education in order to provide the intellectual training for its…

This article recounts what happened when one of the authors, a pre-service teacher, introduced a digital multimodal composition project in her 9th-grade inclusion English classes to support junior high students as they read the novel "To Kill a Mockingbird". Rather than regard new literacies as competing with print literacy for attention, the…

Although not everyone needs textbooks, they still actively serve four audiences within the discipline. The four audiences that benefit from textbooks are students, instructors, the textbook sales force, and the textbook authors themselves. With a growing number of online classes where students have less and less, or even no, face time with their…

This study examined the contribution of word decoding, first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabulary and prior topic knowledge to L2 reading comprehension. For measuring reading comprehension we employed two different reading tasks: Woodcock Passage Comprehension and a researcher-developed content-area reading assignment (the Global…

The purpose of this study is two-fold. First, it investigates the self-images of science teaching held by early childhood pre-service teachers who took constructivism early childhood science education courses. Second, it analyzes what aspects of those courses influenced these images. The participants were eight pre-service teachers who took these…

The framework of perspective transformation (Mezirow, 1994) provides a rich context for the conceptualization of technology use in language and culture learning. Although others have focused on the processes of becoming interculturally competent (Taylor, 1994) and changing language structures (Foster, 1997), more exploration of how technology aids…

Purpose: The reason many Asian students find student-centred learning challenging may be due to cultural factors present in every human interaction between individuals. This study attempts to determine the influence of these cultural factors on students' awareness of how and why they learn. Method: A sample of 12 students enrolled in a two year…

Feedback can have a great impact on student learning. However, in order for it to be effective, feedback needs to be of high quality. Electronic marking has been one of the latest adaptations of technology in teaching and offers a new format of delivering feedback. There is little research investigating the impact the format of feedback has on…

Since 2006 (with the exception of 2013), the "Student Academic Experience Survey" has been designed and developed in partnership between the Higher Education Policy Institute and the Higher Education Academy (HEPI-HEA). The Survey has become one of the major surveys within the UK higher education landscape, providing insight into how…

In Andrade and Du (2005), the authors discuss the ways in which students perceive and use rubrics to support learning in the classroom. In an effort to further examine the impact of rubrics on student learning, this study explored how rubrics impacted students learning, as well as whether using rubrics influenced the likelihood that they would use…

A growing group of green writers are persuading people to change their thinking and their behaviors for the benefit of our planet and its inhabitants. Adding a green writing assignment, unit, or course to your curriculum, the author argues, is an excellent strategy for showing students how their writing can make a difference in their community.…

Research that has examined university assignment writing has varied from large-scale, inventorial surveys across disciplines to more specific, finer-grained analyses of the assignment requirements of specific disciplines. However, while such research has involved surveys of the views and expectations of faculty or the analysis of assignment tasks,…