This study explored the value of using a "guided rubric" to enable students participating in a massive open online course in writing to produce more reliable assessments of their fellow students' writing. To test the assumption that training students to assess will improve their ability to provide quality feedback, a multivariate…

In this reflective piece, we discuss changes made to the practicum at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), a professional graduate school that offers MA degrees in TESOL and TFL. We begin by providing a historical perspective of the practicum as it has evolved in relation to other exit mechanisms. Th en, we provide…

The European Commission considers the development of digital competences a strategic action to spread and to develop a more active digital participation of citizens. The objective is to increase the level of digital competence in the European citizens up to 2015 and to reduce the number of those who don't use new technologies and don't surf the…

Content analysis of course syllabi can answer a variety of questions about the structure of courses and the campus culture of teaching and learning. The authors report a review of the full population of undergraduate syllabi at one institution during one academic term (n = 1153), including rubric design and training procedures for reviewers. The…

We describe an alternative to the kinds of observation-based lab exercises that are often used to cover animal and plant evolution with respect to transitioning from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. We wrote this activity to address these objectives, but also to model the process of scientific inquiry and to require students to collect and analyze…

In order to prepare students to successfully engage with native speakers and members of heritage language communities both at home and abroad, educators must develop course curricula that emphasize cultural practices, products, perspectives, and comparisons as well as provide students with opportunities to directly apply the skills that they have…

Using Kegan's constructive-developmental theory, this study explores to what extent epistemological development is a factor in critical thinking performance and learning in reading and writing among a diverse group of six adult learners. Analysis of a developmental interview, a summative assessment and participant surveys indicated that learners…

Similarity reports of plagiarism detectors should be approached with caution as they may not be sufficient to support allegations of plagiarism. This study developed a 50-item rubric to simplify and standardize evaluation of academic papers. In the spring semester of 2011-2012 academic year, 161 freshmen's papers at the English Language Teaching…

The purpose of this quantitative pretest posttest quasi-experimental research study was to explore the effect of the NESD on clinical judgment in associate degree nursing students and compare the differences between groups when the Nursing Education Simulation Design (NESD) guided simulation in order to identify educational strategies promoting…

Background: The shortage of skilled workers choosing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) careers in the USA and worldwide has fueled a movement towards STEAM, in which the "A" addresses the arts and humanities. STEAM education has been proposed as a way to offer relevant problems to solve while drawing on creative and…

A rubric for research theses was developed, based on the manual of the American Psychological Association, to be used as an assessment tool for teachers and students. The aim was to make students aware of what is expected, get familiar with criteria, and interpret teacher and peer feedback. In two studies, it was examined whether students use and…

Direct assessments of instructional practice (e.g., classroom observations) are necessary to identify and eliminate opportunity gaps in students' learning of mathematics. This study examined 114 middle school mathematics classrooms in four instructionally focused urban districts. Results from the Instructional Quality Assessment identified high…

We used mixed methods to examine differences in the early writing development of children, identified as at risk of literacy difficulties, in the context of Reading Recovery (RR). From an extant dataset of 24 children, we identified those who made fast progress (n = 6) and those who did not (n = 8). We studied change over time in the sources of…

This research study, grounded in experiential learning theory, utilized a draw-and-explain assessment to measure change in secondary students' knowledge before and after an experiential field trip. Our results indicated that the secondary students (aged 15-18 years) had pre-existing knowledge of the local delta area that included both abiotic and…

This study explored student teachers' cognitive presence and learning achievements by integrating the SOP[superscript 2] Model in which self-study (S), online group discussion (O) and double-stage presentations (P[superscript 2]) were implemented in the flipped classroom. The research was conducted at a university in Taiwan with 31 student…