Education and training is widely acknowledged as being one of the key factors for leveraging organisational success. However, it is equally acknowledged that skills development and the acquisition of learning through managed cognitive approaches has yet to provide a "perfect" match. Whilst it is argued that an ideal learning scenario…

Scholars and professional organizations have described participation in target language (TL) communities as one of the primary aims of language learning, but little work has been done to determine how students define those communities or envision their own involvement within them. This exploratory study drew on questionnaire and interview data to…

The purpose of this study was to examine music education undergraduate students' expectations of and preferences for their music education faculty members' personal and professional backgrounds and compare them to the actual backgrounds of current music teacher educators. The research questions were: Do music education undergraduate students…

Social media technologies were introduced among the modern society and are part of its routine in many ways--knowledge acquisition and sharing, interpersonal relationships, media diffusion--sometimes complementing and even substituting tools that were specifically designed for similar activities. This research compares social media sites and…

Postsecondary English language education is a growing field in the United States. While there has been considerable research on international student mobility in higher education, there is limited research on the population's participation in U.S. English language programs (ELPs). This study examined literature in related fields to create a…

An effective studying strategy requires developed personalized study skills to increase student success and retention at the college level. Within these personalized study skills, different students have developed different study habits and environments (study patterns). Yet, the study patterns of people who have achieved outstanding academic…

Research in design of Web-based modules should incorporate aging as an important factor given the diversity of the current workforce. This work aims to understand how Web-Based Learning modules can be designed to accommodate young (25-35 years) as well as older (55-65 years) users by: (1) identifying how information sources (instructor video,…

Using students' process data from the game-based Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) iSTART-ME, the current study examines students' propensity to use system currency to unlock game-based features, (i.e., referred to here as "spendency"). This study examines how spendency relates to students' interaction preferences, in-system performance,…

The present study, situated in the area of variational pragmatics, contrasts tag question (TQ) use in Ireland and Great Britain using spoken data from the Irish and British components of the International Corpus of English (ICE). Analysis is on the formal and functional level and also investigates form-functional relationships. Findings reveal…

The systematic use of reinforcers is an essential component of behavioral intervention for individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Today, the use of rigorous formal preference assessments, including paired-preference assessments, are widely conducted to help determine which items to use as reinforcers during intervention. Although…

A range of proposals aim to reform teacher compensation, recruitment, and retention. Teachers have generally not embraced these policies. One potential explanation for their objections is that teachers are relatively risk averse. We examine this hypothesis using a risk-elicitation task common to experimental economics. By comparing preferences of…

The study used Explanatory Sequential Design (ESD) of Mixed-Methods to investigate college students' and instructors' perspectives of constructivist learning environment (CLE). Students, including graduates and undergraduates from a Midwestern university, rated their preference for personal relevance, collaboration, negotiation, and autonomy as…

Google the question, "How is the Internet changing the way we communicate?," and you will find no shortage of opinions, or fears, about the Internet altering the way we communicate. Although the Internet is not necessarily making communication briefer (neither is the Internet making communication less formal), the Internet is manifesting…

Two important and related developments in children between 18 and 24 months of age are the rapid expansion of object name vocabularies and the emergence of an ability to recognize objects from sparse representations of their geometric shapes. In the same period, children also begin to show a preference for planar views (i.e., views of objects held…

The watermaze delayed matching-to-place (DMP) task was modified to include probe trials, to quantify search preference for the correct place. Using a zone analysis of search preference, a gradual decay of one-trial memory in rats was observed over 24 h with weak memory consistently detected at a retention interval of 6 h, but unreliably at 24 h.…