Deaf people have long held the belief that American Sign Language (ASL) plays a significant role in the academic development of deaf children. Despite this, the education of deaf children has historically been exclusive of ASL and constructed as an English-only, deficit-based pedagogy. Newer research, however, finds a strong correlation between…

Though many programs for undecided students focus on the "developing purpose" vector, the author argues that putting purpose before competency is putting the cart before the horse. In this article, she shares practical strategies she has used to help her students at the University of Arizona reach competence in understanding the academic world.…

e-Learning has entered the mainstream in higher education and many institutions are implementing technology-mediated learning at some level. This paper outlines the case of a course taught jointly in 2010 over three months by two graduate programmes in management at the University of Tsukuba in Japan and the Grenoble Ecole de Management in France…

In 1996, faculty at Sitting Bull College (SBC, Fort Yates, North Dakota) developed its Environmental Science (ENS) Program, basing it on the scientific method and techniques students would need for employment in environmental technician positions with local and tribal agencies. Over the course of 15 years, this employment-based training evolved…

The Educational Innovation Incubator is an electronic classroom designed to evolve at the University of Central Missouri. This newly enacted endeavor is a place for faculty and students to combine the scholarship of teaching and learning into their courses by experimenting with the latest technologies in education. This paper describes the process…

Traditional approaches to education and youth work were transformed by two psychologists who came to the United States as Hitler rose to power. Practical theorist Kurt Lewin challenged mechanistic ideas of behavior by studying children in their natural "life space." Theory practitioner Fritz Redl applied life space concepts to work with…

Given a blank slate, what should the 21st century college classroom look like, and how should it be operated? Answering those questions is the idea behind setting up "incubator classrooms," spaces dedicated to trying out new technologies and new ways of teaching and learning. By incubating new ideas, faculty members and IT staff discover which…

In this paper we present a history of the idea of Open Educational Resources, overview the current state of the Open Educational Resources movement, report on critical issues facing the field in the immediate future, and present two new projects to watch in 2009.

Recruiting, preparing, and retaining high quality secondary mathematics and science teachers are three of the most critical problems in the nation's urban schools that serve a vast majority of children from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Although the factors contributing to these problems are complex, one area that has caught…

In 1995, author Earl Shorris established a small educational program designed to help young adults escape from poverty. The curriculum chosen by Shorris for this experimental program focused solely on a classically based, college-level study in the humanities. While I do not find that Shorris provided proof that a classically inspired course in…

Present Educational Modelling Languages are used to formally specify abstract learning scenarios in a machine-interpretable format. Current tooling does not provide teachers/designers with some graphical facilities to help them in reusing existent scenarios. They need human-readable representations. This paper discusses the UML4LD experimental…

Increasingly, educational reform is linked to the concept of professional learning communities (PLCs). Definitions of PLCs vary, but generally the concept refers to a group of educators who "continuously seek and share learning, and act on their learning" (Hord 1997, 6). Stoll and her colleagues, concluding their review of the current state of…

In this article, the authors describe an interdisciplinary doctoral course via a seminar (one semester, one-and-a-half hours weekly), that students found to be a major awakening and an important part of their professional development. Addressed were separate disciplines, via an experimental "How to be a Professor" course, and…

A mixed-mode university course, combining online learning and face-to-face meetings, can encourage students to formulate and express their own ideas more than would be the case in traditional classrooms. This article describes an experimental project at the University of British Columbia and explores connections between online learning and aspects…

This paper describes the pedagogical impact of real-world experimental projects undertaken as part of an advanced undergraduate fluid mechanics subject at an Australian university. The projects have been organized to complement traditional lectures and introduce students to the challenges of professional design, physical modelling, data collection…