Questionnaires administered manually can cause surreptitious peer pressure on the candidate to finish when 'the others" have completed theirs, forcing students to rush or skip individual items or may hinder the ability of noticing participants who may be having difficulty understanding certain items. These drawbacks can have serious…

This study employed Kamimura and Oi (1996)'s classification of the organizational patterns of the argumentative essay structure: Thesis Statement (TS), Background Information (BI), Reservation (R), Hesitation (H), Rational Appeals (RA), Affective Appeals (AA) and Conclusion (C). 178 essays, 84 written by Chinese EFL learners, 84 written by Korean…

Individual differences refer to the unique ways each human being differs from another human being as expressed in behaviour or perceived in the physical appearance. Three factors of individual differences identified to be closely related to learning/acquisition of skills and performance of tasks. These are personality dimensions, self-efficacy and…

Purpose: The author presents a view of research in speech motor control over the past 5 decades, as observed from within Ken Stevens's Speech Communication Group (SCG) in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT. Method: The author presents a limited overview of some important developments and discoveries. The perspective is based…

Many performance indicators in Australian higher education are based on the quantitative data from student feedback surveys, while the qualitative data usually generated by these surveys receive relatively limited attention. This paper argues that these data, if collected and analysed in a systematic way, can be used as an effective and robust…

Although distance language education has been widely adopted in university learning, very few researchers to date have looked at off-screen behaviors of second/foreign language learners in their physical environments while they engage in synchronous (real-time) online courses. This study examined one focal student's off-screen behaviors while…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the evaluation of a training course on chemicals for occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals. The study aims were to assess the effectiveness of the course; to find out what type of training met these workers' needs best, as their role is vital in the management of safety at work; and to…

The present eye-tracking study aimed to investigate the impact of auditory speech information on 12-month-olds' gaze behavior to silently-talking faces. We examined German infants' face-scanning behavior to side-by-side presentation of a bilingual speaker's face silently speaking German utterances on one side and French on the other side, before…

Student presentations can often seem like a formality rather than a lesson in representing oneself or group in a professional manner. To improve the quality of group presentations, the authors modified the popular presentation style of Pecha Kucha (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide) for marketing courses to help students prepare and deliver…

Objective. To quantify the presence of health behavior theory constructs in iPhone apps targeting physical activity. Methods. This study used a content analysis of 127 apps from Apple's (App Store) "Health & Fitness" category. Coders downloaded the apps and then used an established theory-based instrument to rate each app's inclusion of…

This article presents preliminary findings from use of a novel computer program that implements an evidence-based psychological intervention to treat depression based on behavioral activation (BA) therapy. The program is titled “Building a Meaningful Life Through Behavioral Activation”. The findings derive from an open trial with moderate to…

This paper reports a study conducted to formally evaluate a social problem-solving skills game during the start of the development to ensure that the desired game attributes were successfully embodied in the final game. Two methods, heuristic evaluation and participatory design, were adopted to assess whether the features of the game pose…

This study examined whether inspecting and constructing different part-task-specific visualizations differentially affects learning. To this end, a complex business-economics problem was structured into three phase-related part-tasks: (1) determining core concepts, (2) proposing multiple solutions, and (3) coming to a single solution. Each phase…

The subject of teacher competencies has been a key issue in mathematics education reform as the quality of an education system is fundamentally defined by the quality of its teachers. The study reported in this article attempted to identify and analyse displayed preservice teacher competencies and challenges encountered in early experiences with a…

We designed the Kukui Cup challenge to foster energy conservation and increase energy literacy. Based on a review of the literature, the challenge combined a variety of elements into an overall game experience, including: real-time energy feedback, goals, commitments, competition, and prizes. We designed a software system called Makahiki to…