One of the major teaching challenges of higher education is helping students to bridge knowledge with real life practice. This is especially important in applied fields including medicine, social science, education and engineering. Traditionally, practicum and internship programs are the only means for students to step outside of classroom…

This study compared two versions of a 13-week mandatory undergraduate inclusive education course to determine their effects on the self-efficacy of pre-service elementary education teachers. For the purposes of the research, the self-efficacy construct was applied specifically to working with students who have inclusive educational needs. The…

University education often suffers from a lack of an explicit and adaptable didactic design. Students complain about the insufficient adaptability to the learners' needs. Learning content and services need to reach their audience according to their different prerequisites, needs, and different learning styles and conditions. A way to overcome such…

Vocabulary knowledge at school entry is a robust predictor of later reading achievement. Many children begin formal reading instruction at a significant disadvantage due to low levels of vocabulary. Until recently, relatively few research studies examined the efficacy of vocabulary interventions for children in the early primary grades (e.g.,…

Virtual world platforms such as "Second Life" have been successfully used in educational contexts to motivate and engage learners. This article reports on an exploratory workshop involving a group of high school students using "Second Life" for an urban planning project. Young people are traditionally an under-represented demographic when it comes…

As robot technologies develop, many researchers have tried to use robots to support education. Studies have shown that robots can help students develop problem-solving abilities and learn computer programming, mathematics, and science. However, few studies discuss the use of robots to facilitate the teaching of second languages. We discuss whether…

To assist in the training and professional development of faculty new to teaching online, Sacred Heart University established the Digital Learning Faculty Certificate Program. This 8-week online cohort program provides faculty with best practices for teaching online, including instructional design, effective online communication and appropriate…

This study aims to create a blended learning environment, based on the concept of competency-based training, in a Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) classroom at an American university. Drupal platform and web 2.0 tools were used as supplements to traditional face-to-face classroom instruction. Students completed various selective tasks and…

The purpose of this collaborative inquiry project was to examine teacher education practices in two early childhood degree programmes in a school of education at a regional university in Australia. All students are enrolled in these online courses as distance learners. The reconceptualised online pedagogy immersed students, peers and their…

In this paper we challenge designers, researchers, teachers, students, and parents to re-assess and re-envision the value of technology-mediated feedback and e-assessment by examining the innovative roles feedback and assessment played in the design of three contemporary web-based learning environments. These environments include 1) an…

Service-learning is an instructional method that incorporates community service into the curriculum. The integration of service-learning into business pedagogy provides benefits that are particularly valuable to business students. Yet business educators have been slow to integrate service-learning into their classes. The authors explore the…

This study investigates and compares the relative importance of Web module design dimensions and their attributes as perceived by student participants in a research study and those defined by a selected group of researchers in the literature. We aim to understand whether the dimensions of clarity, organization, structure, visual/aesthetical…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of CBI lesson sequence type and cognitive style of field dependence on learning from Computer-Based Cooperative Instruction (CBCI) in WEB on the dependent measures, achievement, reading comprehension and reading rate. Eighty-seven college undergraduate students were randomly assigned to…

It is ironic that the management of education has become more closed while learning has become more open, particularly over the past 10-20 years. The curriculum has become more instrumental, predictive, standardized, and micro-managed in the belief that this supports employability as well as the management of educational processes, resources, and…

Operation Magpie was a citizen science project that involved the community in collecting data about magpies. This article describes one aspect of the project from an education perspective. The study began with a collaboration of teacher educators, environmental scientists and a local radio station. After an initial workshop with 75 teachers, three…