This study examines components of outdoor adventure programs for middle school students, using a school with a successful program as a model. Outdoor education is often left out of these years for financial and safety reasons, however the benefits of adventure programs are both measurable and profound to self-concept, confidence, identity growth,…

Technological Entrepreneurship is both an art and a science. As such, the education of a technological entrepreneur requires both an academic and an experiential component. One form of experiential education is creating real new ventures with student teams. When these ventures are created in an online modality, students work in virtual teams and…

Collaborative learning is increasing in popularity in education. This collaborative pedagogy is based on a significant body of research that shows positive learning gains. Additionally, given the nature of much of the information-age work, it is thought that such collaborative activity in school helps develop knowledge, skills and attitudes that…

The purpose of this study was to explore Bean and Metzner's (1985) persistence factors, defined by items on the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), to determine the impact on nontraditional student persistence. This quantitative study measured nontraditional student persistence at a community college in the Midwest using…

This study examined the influences of online and blended instructional delivery methods, as defined by the Sloan Consortium (2006), and the influences of adult learner discussions on engagement in a classroom. Asynchronous and hybrid delivery methods were examined through the learner's perceptions of the level of discussion, community, and teacher…

Using the example of responses from civil engineering students at a very highly ranked participating university, this guide demonstrates the importance of comparative data when using student questionnaire data for undergraduate academic program review. It also emphasizes the advantage of using factor structures for better questionnaire-based…

The purpose of this study was to find out the Relationship between Social Maturity and Academic Achievement of Higher Secondary School Students. Survey method is adopted for the study. The investigator has randomly selected 320 Higher Secondary students, out of which 160 are boys and 160 are girls, studying in twelve different schools in…

Research investigating graduate teaching assistants' (TAs') knowledge of fundamental statistics concepts is sparse at best; yet at many universities, TAs play a substantial role in the teaching of undergraduate statistics courses. This paper provides a framework for characterizing TAs' content knowledge in a sampling context and endeavors to raise…

Learner-centered instruction is principally rooted in the constructivist learning theory. It has gained particular traction in education fields and is most often associated with the work of John Dewey. The purpose of the current study was to identify effective, learner-centered strategies in history of dress courses. This practice-driven study was…

This article presents a story about eighty-six ninth-grade World History and Geography students who authored a "how-to" book, while pretending that they were experts who lived in the past and had to explain how to do something relating to that time period. These students attended a large high school in the Midwest; the school's…

We present results of a two-semester study to determine whether the inclusion of basic animation techniques in PowerPoint presentations provides an additional learning aid, inhibits learning, or has no effect on student learning for students in an introductory astronomy course. We found that (1) students perceive that animated slides are…

As a new teacher, the best lesson the author learned from a veteran teacher was to get feedback from students regularly. Unfortunately, many teachers are afraid to ask students what's working and what's not. Perhaps it's because they're alone with kids in a room; perhaps because (especially as new teachers) they don't want to seem weak by asking…

While from a technological perspective Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) systems have been improved considerably, previous studies have shown that the social aspect of the CSCL is often neglected or assumed to happen automatically by simply creating such virtual learning environments. By distinguishing between students' non-task…

Compared with course management software (e.g. Blackboard and WebCT), the content and technology offered by a textbook website (TBW) is relatively costless to universities and professors, and is a potentially valuable tool that can be leveraged to help students learn course material. The present study uses the extended Technology Acceptance Model…

This article describes the author's reflections on a service-learning course at Penn State Lehigh Valley, a campus of The Pennsylvania State University. The author provides background about the university, the community need, and the service-learning course. Reflections from assessing two semesters of the service-learning course are provided.