As universities seek to innovate to meet the needs of students, compressed courses are becoming more prevalent. This study compares a compressed-format course to a traditional format course in economics that were each taught in the summer. Results indicate that student performance in a compressed course differs in meaningful ways. Effort-based…

Background: Skill integration is vital in students' mastery development and is especially prominent in developing code tracing skills which are foundational to programming, an increasingly important area in the current STEM education. However, instructional design to support skill integration in learning technologies has been limited. Objectives:…

The pedagogical paradigms of Direct instruction (behaviorism/objectivism) and Constructivism are often seen as opposing paradigms at the ends of an instructional design continuum. Unfortunately, this view makes the two approaches mutually exclusive. Designers must use the one at the expense of the other. A previous study proposed that the two…

An important component of many Adaptive Instructional Systems (AIS) is a 'Learner Model' intended to track student learning and predict future performance. Predictions from learner models are frequently used in combination with mastery criterion decision rules to make pedagogical decisions. Important aspects of learner models, such as learning…

The aims of university System Dynamics (SD) programs include the mastery of systems thinking skills, modeling skills, and/or application to solving real-world, dynamic, complex problems. Existing research has articulated learning sequences of what learners should know and be able to do, and when. It is called the competence development framework…

Computer programming is a skill of increasing importance in scientific and technological fields. However, in introductory computer science (CS1) courses in higher education, approximately one in every three students fails. A common reason is that students are overwhelmed by an accelerated and inflexible pace of learning that jeopardizes success.…

In the 21st century, the urgent educational demand for cultivating complex skills in vocational training and learning is met with the effectiveness of the four-component instructional design model. Despite its success, research has identified a notable gap in the address of formative assessment, particularly within computer-supported frameworks.…

The lack of opportunities for students to practice and master their lessons may result in poor performance in advancing mathematics. This technical action research involved high school STEM students in developing TrigOno, a non-digital card game with popular shedding-type gameplay, to address a problem concerning poor student mastery of…

Maker-based education holds promise as a method to support students' development of essential skills and content knowledge across the curriculum. Over a five-year period, the authors developed and iterated on an experiential instructional design specifically designed to afford educators with diverse academic backgrounds and divergent career goals…

An important component of many Adaptive Instructional Systems (AIS) is a 'Learner Model' intended to track student learning and predict future performance. Predictions from learner models are frequently used in combination with mastery criterion decision rules to make pedagogical decisions. Important aspects of learner models, such as learning…

In response to widespread concerns about student mental health, a growing movement in higher education is focused on fostering student well-being as an important element of student success. Thriving college students experience a level of psychological well-being that contributes to their persistence toward graduation and allows them to gain…

This design case centers around a creative assignment given to graduate students studying instructional design. The goal of the assignment is to facilitate mastery of learning theories through the theory-based evaluation of an instructional product, using both research and imagination. By applying learning theories in a practical and engaging…

Many engineering courses rely on in-person lectures and textbooks for content delivery, with homework sets and exams for evaluating and reinforcing student progress. Yet some research studies have shown that exams--high-pressure, time-limited assessments--are detrimental to the learning process and unnecessarily increase students' stress. We…

In this naturalistic design-research study, we tracked 172,417 learning journeys of students who were interacting with an online resource, the Indiana University Plagiarism Tutorials and Tests (IPTAT) at https://plagiarism.iu.edu. IPTAT was designed using First Principles of Instruction (FPI; Merrill in Educ Technol Res Dev 50:43-59, 2002,…

Course assessment is traditionally a one-way process, where instructors evaluate pupils' progress toward mastery. Done conscientiously, this sort of feedback can be effective but relies upon an individual student's ability to self-regulate, which is predicated upon their ability to manage their environment and incorporate evaluations into their…