This paper describes a graduate-level class project centered on editing chemistry-related entries in Wikipedia. This project enables students to work collaboratively, explore advanced concepts in chemistry, and learn how to communicate science to a diverse audience, including the general public. The format and structure of the project is outlined…

The use of ICT to enhance teaching and learning depends on effective design, which operates at many levels of granularity from the small to the very large. This reflects the range of educational problems from course design down to the design of activities focused on specific learning objectives. For maximum impact these layers of design need to be…

Intercultural simulations are instructional activities that engage and challenge participants with experiences integral to encounters between people of more than one cultural group. Simulations designed specifically to support intercultural encounters have been in use since the 1970s. This article examines the conceptual bases for intercultural…

To promote content literacy, students have to be actively involved. This article focuses on strategies that stimulate student interest by involving them with the content during pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading activities. These processes provide students with optimal opportunities for comprehension. The authors recommend the use of a…

Current research on the teaching of writing puts some secondary English teachers in a bind. While many teachers understand that the best ways for students to develop into strong writers is to encourage them to select personally relevant topics, de-emphasize mechanics, and provide opportunities to take risks, the message they receive from state and…

While reflection continues to be promoted as a central feature of teachers' continuous professional development (CPD) activities in Scotland and elsewhere, a wider debate across professions and national boundaries has opened as to how reflection might be re-conceptualised to restore its social and critical dimensions. This paper seeks to…

Epistemic beliefs comprise the individual understanding of the nature of knowledge and the creation of knowledge. Hence, they impact the perception of learning opportunities and professional learning activities. Many enterprises apply computer technology in order to support staff development through e-learning activities. However, a closer look at…

Reflective journal writing is acknowledged as a powerful method for promoting student learning in higher education contexts. Numerous scholars highlight the benefits of reflective writing and journaling for students and teachers in a wide range of teaching areas. There is however, little discussion of how reflective writing is used in teaching and…

Video games are often regarded as promising teaching and learning tools for the 21st century. One of the main arguments is that video games are appealing to contemporary students. However, there are indications that video game acceptance cannot be taken for granted. In this study, a path model to examine and predict student acceptance of video…

Earlier educational models have not managed to take into account novel contextual and mobile methods of learning with the advances in technology-mediated learning. The article firstly reports an educational approach, namely, future innovative in-service teacher education in Europe (ICE-ED). This project was supported by the European Union Comenius…

An instructional method is described that was used in a large, introductory organic chemistry course to ask online, post-class questions and to use the students' answers to design the lesson and learning activities for the following class. Additional goals of this method were to provide relevant, regular, and prompt feedback to students and the…

Fun with Foodella is a nutrition and physical activity workbook designed for elementary-aged youth. The objective was to determine if the Fun with Foodella program increased participant preference for fruit, vegetables, low-fat dairy products, and physical activity. Four intervention (53 students) and four control (68 students) schools…

This study investigated communication patterns and behavior in problem-solving groups in a graduate online course. An inductive qualitative analysis method was employed to analyze 732 messages that were retrieved from small group forums. The current study identified a temporal pattern of group development was in comparison with existing…

Teachers in a middle school and a high school with high percentages of English language learners showed evidence of transformative learning during the 2 years in which they collaborated in an ongoing professional development activity called "learning labs," which include focused discussion of observations of colleagues' classrooms.…

Representational fluency (RF) includes an ability to interpret, create, move within and among, and connect tool-based representations of mathematical objects. Taken as an indicator of conceptual understanding, there is a need to better support school algebra students' RF in learning environments that utilize both computer algebra systems…