The United States government is perennially in need of employees with proficiency in critical foreign languages to communicate with foreign counterparts and maintain relationships worldwide. In order to fulfill this need, the government devotes significant resources training federal employees to advanced levels of language proficiency through…

One of the most serious forms of cheating occurs when examinees have item preknowledge and prior access to secure test material before taking an exam for the purpose of obtaining an inflated test score. Examinees that cheat and have prior knowledge of test content before testing may have an unfair advantage over examinees that do not cheat. Item…

Epistemic beliefs, epistemic cognitions, and self-regulation processes have a significant role in students' learning. Through this study, I investigated the role of mechanical engineering students' epistemic beliefs and epistemic cognitions involved in self-regulation processes while working on tasks with different difficulty levels. In this…

The problem explored is the issue of Asian international students who arrive in Canada and the United States and are unprepared for Western advanced essay writing practices. The location used for research was a globally focused graduate program in an American university situated in Vancouver, Canada. The participants were males and females that…

This qualitative research examines the types of metacognitive assessments used by teachers to describe d/Dhh students' metacognitive strategies. In other words, this study investigates three main points: first, teachers' perceptions regarding the use of metacognitive strategies during reading instruction; second, the types of metacognitive…

This dissertation describes an experiment to investigate how learners with different levels of background in computer science learn core concepts of computer science, in particular, algorithms. We designed a study to focus on cognitive task analysis for eliciting the empirical mental elements of learning two graph algorithms. Cognitive workload…

Two people in the same situation may ascribe very different meanings to their experiences. They will form different awareness, reacting differently to shared information. Various factors can give rise to this behavior. These factors include, but are not limited to, prior knowledge, training, biases, cultural factors, social factors, team vs.…

A common drawback in traditional language education is that all students in the same class use the same content. Since students may have different backgrounds such as prior knowledge and learning speed, one single curriculum may not be able to accommodate every student. Unfortunately, most students cannot afford personalized language learning,…

A phenomenological study was used to investigate factors that promoted online course completion among African American male undergraduate students. This investigation was important due to the current problem of academic underachievement in online courses among African American males. Ten males were interviewed with significant statements and…

Research is not clear on how to address the difficulty students have conceptualizing geologic processes and phenomena. This study investigated how animations coupled with seductive details effect learners' situational interest and emotions. A quantitative quasi-experimental study employing an independent-measures factorial design was used. The…

The field of Physics Education Research (PER) seeks to investigate how students learn physics and how instructors can help students learn more effectively. The process by which learners create understanding about a complex physics concept is an active area of research. My study explores this process, using solar cells as the context. To understand…

Because language provides the framework through which knowledge is constructed, it is crucial to consider the ways in which students with limited English proficiencies are able to express their understanding. English language learners (ELLs) make up a significant portion of the student body in the education system and represent many ethnic and…

Cognitive load theory (CLT) (Sweller 1988, 1998, 2010) provides us a guiding framework for designing instructional materials. CLT differentiates three subtypes of cognitive load: intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load. The three cognitive loads are theorized based on the number of simultaneously processed elements in working memory.…

Adults are prone to treating percents, one representational format of rational numbers, as novel cases of natural number. This suggests that percent values are not differentiated from natural numbers; a conceptual shift from the natural numbers to the rational numbers has not yet occurred. This is most surprising, considering people are inundated…

Internet-enabled mobile devices have increased the accessibility of learning content for students. Given the ubiquitous nature of mobile computing technology, a thorough understanding of the acceptance factors that impact a learner's intention to use mobile technology as an augment to their studies is warranted. Student acceptance of mobile…