This study investigated the use of scaffolds in problem-based hypermedia. Three hundred and twelve undergraduate students enrolled in a computer literacy course worked in project teams to use a hypermedia PBL program focused on designing a personal computer. The PBL program included content scaffolds, metacognitive scaffolds, or no scaffolds.…

This study develops virtual manipulative, polyominoes kits for junior high school students to explore polyominoes. The current work conducts a non-equivalent group pretest-post-test quasi-experimental design to compare the performance difference between using physical manipulatives and virtual manipulatives in finding the number of polyominoes.…

We examined (a) whether motivational orientation can spread from teachers to students during 2 consecutive teaching-learning sessions and (b) mechanisms underlying this phenomenon in a special physical education session delivered to high school students. Participants who were taught a sport activity by an allegedly paid instructor reported lower…

Among his many accomplishments in educational psychology, Merlin C. Wittrock is perhaps best remembered for his enduring contributions to the science of learning. His vision of how learning works is best explicated in articles published in "Educational Psychologist" (Wittrock, 1974, 1978, 1989, 1991, 1992), beginning with his classic 1974 article,…

Mobile phones as new addition to information and communication technologies have created new ways to help learners in the process of foreign language learning. Given the importance of academic vocabularies for university students, this study tried to investigate the effectiveness of SMS on Iranian university students' vocabulary learning and…

The present study examined the cognitive factors that influence children's physical science learning from a multimedia instruction. Using a causally coherent text and visual models, we taught 4th- and 7th-grade children about the observable and molecular properties of the three states of water. We manipulated whether the text was read by a tutor…

The economic benefits of staying on in education have been well established. But do students know this? One of the reasons why students might drop out of education too soon is because they are not well informed about the costs and benefits of staying on in education at an appropriate time of their educational career. Indeed, the fact that…

The Learning Communities Demonstration is a national research project that is testing the effectiveness of learning communities in six community colleges across the United States: Merced College in California; The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) in Baltimore, Maryland; Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida; Houston…

This research used a quasi-experimental design with two conditions to test the impact of active learning in the context of integrated instructional design. The control condition was a traditional approach to teaching an undergraduate strategy capstone class. The intervention condition was an undergraduate strategy capstone class that was designed…

Purpose: This paper aims to share experiences in teaching a Financial Accounting Principles course using a hybrid problem based learning (PBL) method. The three specific objectives of this paper are to document how the PBL project for this course was developed and managed in class, to compare the academic performance of PBL students with non-PBL…

Following the seminal writing of James Coleman (1988), a number of scholars have suggested that inequality in child and adolescent development reflects differences in social capital among families from different backgrounds (e.g., Sampson, Morenoff, & Earls, 1999; Crosnoe, 2004; Kao, 2004). By "social capital," Coleman referred to…

Through a synthesis of test publisher norms and national longitudinal datasets, this study provides new national norms of academic growth in K-12 reading and math that can be used to reinterpret conventional effect sizes in time units. We propose d' a time-indexed effect size metric to estimate how long it would take for an "untreated"…

Performance in Biology at secondary school level in Kenya remains poor and one reason is the teaching approach adopted by teachers with teacher-centered approaches being pre-dominant. This study sought to determine the effect of cooperative learning approach on mean achievement scores in Biology of secondary school students.…

Reading Comprehension is one of the four components tested by the "MUET" (Malaysian University English Test) for Sixth-Form students in Malaysia, and school teachers are charged with the task of helping these students improve. This article discusses how "reciprocal teaching strategies" could help low-proficiency Sixth-Form…

Baxter Magolda's Learning Partnerships model was used to create a program designed to foster student epistemological development. To assess its effectiveness, the Measure of Epistemological Reflection was administered to the experimental cohort and a comparable group in the traditional general education program. Results indicate that the model…