This paper reports on the use of Engeström's (1987) Activity Theory (AT) framework to gain insights into the contradictions that emerge within the activity system of the online component of an advanced writing skills course, delivered in a blended-learning mode using the Process Approach. Activity theory, with its principle of contradictions, has…

This study aimed to identify factors influencing student engagement in online and blended courses at one Australian regional university. It applied a data science approach to learning and teaching data gathered from the learning management system used at this university. Data were collected and analysed from 23 subjects, spanning over 5500 student…

Students routinely struggle with grasping and retaining the content of marketing research courses. To combat this problem, a new market research course was designed that applies all content in the course to an outdoors-based experiential learning project. Specifically, a hands-on nature therapy project was used that involves developing a marketing…

Traditionally teachers display the learning outline at the beginning and conclusions at the end of didactic teaching sessions, and students may find it difficult to understand how teaching activities relate to learning objectives and what they should study for assessments. We introduced the "concept-sharing approach" in our…

When U.S. English learners (ELs) attend college, they are more likely to enroll in 2-year community colleges than in 4-year colleges. Prior research points to the tension between English as a second language (ESL) programs providing support to ELs and lengthy ESL programs acting as barriers to ELs seeking access to mainstream college coursework.…

Not because of the unexpected global pandemic, but because of the emergence of educational technology and pedagogical innovation, the ways of teaching and learning have been switched to technology integrated modes such as blended and flipped learning which is more than changing to online from face-to-face. Yet, many institutes, which rely on a…

With the eruption of political, racial, and pandemic-related conflicts and unprecedented threats to U.S. democracy, educators have raised their voices about the need to teach controversial issues in social studies classrooms. However many teachers feel unprepared to take up this challenging practice. They may also avoid it because they fear loss…

This article presents a technique for interweaving information literacy (IL) into a pre-existing assignment of an introductory general education human geography course. The course, titled Geography of Sport, represents a unique opportunity to introduce students to contemporary methods of geographical study and analysis through a range of…

The impact of the "Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)" on K-12 science education has gained significant momentum over the last several years. Evidence of the "NGSS" can be seen in revised state science content standards and amended teacher preparation standards. Due to this growing impetus, a holistic redesign of teacher…

General education programs often offer students a choice among various courses to fulfill a specific requirement. However, the extent to which these courses equally enable students to achieve the intended learning outcomes can vary, potentially giving some students an unintended advantage. This article evaluates whether students are inadvertently…

Student success is often treated as an observed variable, or something that you can measure directly with a single instrument. Single course outcomes such as final course grade or learning gain on an assessment have become synonymous with success in undergraduate science education research. Continually relying on these narrow course outcomes to…

Based on hundreds of thousands of hours of data about how students learn in massive open online courses, educational machine learning promises to help students who are learning to code. However, in most classrooms, students and assignments do not have enough historical data for feeding these data hungry algorithms. Previous work on predicting…

Privacy is a rather murky concept, but the absence of privacy is clearly felt in today's digital world. With the significant increase in surveillance power of software and hardware, storage capacity, computing power as well as advancement in data science technologies, the threat to privacy is ever increasing. Within the digital realm, privacy has…

Improvement initiatives crafted based on well-understood problems of practice often stand the greatest chance of leading to sustainable educational improvements. Framing problems of practice using multiple modes of evidence is advisable to fully understand the system of root causes of the problem and its stakeholders. In this study, we used the…

Procrastination presents problems not only for undergraduate students, but also for undergraduate faculty, and the effects of student procrastination on academic performance is a joint concern. This two-year follow up study seeks to better understand the relationship between academic performance and the actual time of submission of assignments…