Distance education programmes warrant the use of innovative intervention practices to enhance student learning experiences. Academic and social empathy by faculty has been shown to enhance student retention in programmes along with their critical thinking abilities. Using Holmberg's theory of teaching-learning conversations as the guiding…

This paper focuses on reconfiguring assessment processes so that they support a learning function, in addition to the more traditional measurement function. In the first half of the paper we discuss a framework for "learning-oriented assessment" derived from a project carried out in Hong Kong. We conceptualize learning-oriented…

Struggling readers at the middle level need help using reading strategies effectively in order to become strategic readers. Middle level teachers need both to model and to teach how to use a variety of reading strategies that will help struggling readers become independent. This article deals with the development of the KWHHL strategy. The KWHHL…

Few research examples or discussions about successful and practical application of environmental education within teacher education programs exist (UNESCO-UNEP, 1990). Meaningful environmental education experiences for preservice teachers need to incorporate the processes of inquiry, implementation, and reflection. In this article, we describe an…

As social scientists engage their own subjectivity, there is greater awareness of their own touristic "gaze," or at least the power relations that are evoked in the researcher-subject interaction. In teaching students involved in community service learning, the challenge is to provide a learning experience that addresses power inequities…

International service-learning combines aspects of conventional study abroad with aspects of conventional service-learning, offering an exceptional degree of integration into a target culture and an intensive experience of community service. The present study describes an effort to establish, through qualitative assessment, the degree to which…

As online education escalates, it is important for instructors to explore teaching techniques that engage students and enhance learning at a profound level. To achieve this goal, instructors must look at the primarily text-based environment of the online class not as a limitation, but as an opportunity. Attentive and highly personal teaching that…

This case study investigated 12 graduate students' online collaborative experiences and attitudes in an instructional design course. The instructor divided students into 4 groups based on their academic backgrounds. Content analysis of asynchronous group discussion board messages was used to measure degrees of collaboration of each group in terms…

This paper considers the value of reflexive pedagogical approaches in the teaching of academic communication and writing. We focus on a course developed for pre-degree foundation students at a London higher education institution. Drawing on the students' learning journals, we examine their reflections of the approaches practised on the course.…

This study used the areas of responsibility developed by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC) as a framework for the assessment of Service Learning experiences of undergraduate health education students. In the present study, six Service Learning projects involving 12 students were evaluated using multiple strategies,…

The goal of personalised eLearning is to support e-learning content, activities and collaboration, adapted to the specific needs and influenced by specific preferences of the learner and built on sound pedagogic strategies. One of the major challenges to the mainstream adoption of personalised eLearning is the complexity and time involved in…

Since the early 1990s, graduate schools of business in North America increasingly have relied on short overseas study trips to give students an international experience. Shorter trips have been shown to be more cost-effective and lead to more student participation than study-abroad programs and internships. This article presents the results of a…

This qualitative study includes focus group research involving 99 experienced community partners across eight California communities using community-based research techniques to capture community voices about their service-learning partnerships with different colleges and universities. Partners commented on their perspectives regarding…

One of the author's first assessment experiences at California State University, Sacramento, began when she was assigned to teach a graduate-level program evaluation research course in the Division of Criminal Justice. The chair of the assessment committee and the division chair approached her with the idea of conducting an assessment of the…

This paper reports a survey of 16 to 17 year old students who took part in a school based project activity designed to motivate them to consider a career in engineering. The scheme can be considered a success in that an uppermost estimated figure of 19% more students were recruited to engineering undergraduate courses than might otherwise have…