A literature review of published case studies reporting progress file implementation was conducted with the intent of discovering how this is being interpreted and implemented in higher education institutions. The three studies found were analysed using an ideal type categorization developed by Clegg and Bradley (2006), that is, professional,…

This article describes the Student Tutor Education Program (STEP) at Westchester Community College, which identifies and recruits potential future college English teachers at the community college level while they serve as peer writing tutors, with benefits to the entire college community as well as the teaching profession in general. STEP enables…

Discussions of access and ethics dominated as the Forum on Education Abroad convened its annual meeting this month. During a session on the ethics of pricing study-abroad programs, overseas-study directors said they felt increased pressure to account for their costs, even as the declining value of the dollar drives up expenses. The price tag is…

South Korea has adopted the widespread use of digital textbooks. Part school reform and part an effort to prepare today's children for tomorrow's challenging world, the way in which this effort was implemented and the lessons learned are valuable. This article highlights the history of the digital textbook project and compares printed textbooks…

Many excellent corpus-based language learning resources (e.g., concordancers) have been freely available on the Internet for some time. Google assisted language learning (GALL) is also gaining increasing acceptance. These tools are a potential resource for English as an additional language (EAL) university students who want to independently…

The purpose of this study was three-fold: to measure the ability of the "Medical Explorers" case-based curriculum to improve higher order thinking skills; to evaluate the impact of the "Medical Explorers" case-based curriculum to help students be self directed learners; and to investigate the impact of the "Medical…

Self-directed learning (SDL) is an important life skill in a knowledge-based society and prepares students to persist, manage their time and resources, use logic to construct their knowledge, argue their views, and collaborate. The purpose of this study was to facilitate mastery of physics concepts through self-directedness in formative testing…

This study investigated the extent to which learning readiness, prior-to-school experiences, and child and family characteristics influence children's literacy and numeracy achievement across the first year of primary school. A sample of 104 kindergarten children was recruited from 16 classrooms and followed from the beginning to the end of their…

To conduct evaluations that can benefit individual programs as well as the field as a whole, environmental educators must have the necessary evaluation competencies. This exploratory study was conducted to determine to what extent a self-directed learning resource entitled "My Environmental Education Evaluation Resource Assistant" (MEERA) can…

Despite the increased use of new learning technologies, there is still much to be learned about the role of learner characteristics in online learning. The purpose of this study was to examine how subjects' characteristics normally associated with effective training (i.e., initial motivation to learn and self-efficacy) related to learning in a…

This investigation focused on the effects of a treatment package including multiple exemplar training, time delay, and a self-directed learning prompt (KWHL chart) on students' ability to complete an inquiry lesson independently and generalize to untrained materials. Three middle school students with moderate intellectual disabilities learned to…

Many undergraduate institutions offer individual research opportunities for upper-level students in independent study courses and summer undergraduate research programs. These are necessarily limited to a small number of students. Greater numbers of students can benefit from incorporating student-directed investigative experiences into…

The goal of this study was to understand the roles of goal orientation and self-efficacy when learning from worked examples. A Web-based learning environment, used as a component of a traditional undergraduate chemistry course, served as the context for the study. Goal orientations were derived from Elliot and McGregor's (2001) achievement goals…

Two studies focusing on the development and validation of the Online Self-Regulated Learning Inventory (OSRLI) were conducted. The OSRLI is a self-report instrument assessing the human interaction dimension of online self-regulated learning. It consists of an affect/motivation scale and an interaction strategies scale. In Study 1, exploratory…

The researchers investigated the comparative effects of individually-constructed and collaboratively-constructed computer-based concept mapping on middle school science concept learning. One hundred and sixty one students completed the entire study. Using prior science performance scores to assure equivalence of student achievement across groups,…