Western Governors University was conceptualized in 1995 at a meeting of the Western Governors Association, and founded soon after in an effort to increase degree production in higher education at a lower cost. It has expanded significantly over the past few years, driven both by increased demand for online education and by drastic state budget…

Videos (including commercial films, films made for teaching and films on public websites) are being used in higher education in many different subject areas. With the arrival of websites such as "YouTube", students can access material of varying quality and content on numerous topics. The purpose of this research has been to investigate…

This study tested the possibility that interactive lectures explicitly based on activating learners' prior knowledge and driven by a series of logical questions might enhance the effectiveness of lectures. A class of 54 students doing the respiratory system course in the second year of the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery program in my…

"Prior knowledge" (sometimes called schema or background knowledge) is information one already knows that helps him/her make sense of new information. New learning builds on existing prior knowledge. In traditional reporting-style research projects, students bypass this crucial step and plow right into answer-finding. It's no wonder that many…

Using an exploration-explanation sequence of science instruction helps teachers unveil students' prior knowledge about circuits and engage them in minds-on science learning. In these lessons, fourth grade students make predictions and test their ideas about circuits in series through hands-on investigations. The teacher helps students make…

In many situations, readers are asked to learn from multiple documents. Many studies have found that evaluating the trustworthiness and usefulness of document sources is an important skill in such learning situations. There has been, however, no direct evidence that attending to source information helps readers learn from and interpret a…

This article describes the findings from the assessment of a touch-screen, multi-media learning program on livestock health and production: "The Daktari." The program was tested on a sample of 62 livestock keepers in the Nairobi slums of Kariobangi and Kibera. The study examined prior knowledge regarding three livestock diseases (liver…

In laboratory settings, research has found a mismatch between teachers' practices and the likelihood they have to influence students' perceptions and behaviors in laboratory work. Various attributes of experiential learning can enhance learning experiences, yet many have not been subject to exploration in agricultural education. This…

This study used eye-tracking methodology in the school setting to examine fourth graders' online processing of text and graphics while reading an illustrated science text. We were interested in identifying patterns of visual behavior, which was examined considering individual differences in reading comprehension, prior knowledge, and spatial…

Colleges have long had mechanisms for awarding students credit for prior learning, from evaluating transcripts to establishing standards for the units and course credit to be associated with designated scores on nationally and internationally recognized curricula and exams. While the processes for awarding credit via these traditional mechanisms…

As an initial step toward understanding which features of academic language make science-based expository text difficult for students with different English language proficiency (ELP) designations, this study investigated fifth-grade students' thoughts on text difficulty, their knowledge of the features of academic language, and the…

The teachers' perception and implementation of differentiated instruction, the difference between novice and experience teachers' perception on differentiate instruction, and the predictive relationship between teachers' perceptions and teachers' implementation of differentiated instruction were studied. The study utilized a…

This dissertation explores how education has had an impact on the lives of twenty-three professors who are Native. Within the context of this study, education may refer to either learning in the western frame of schooling or non western forms of Indigenous education. While many individuals would define education as a process that develops life and…

Research on the use of learning tools has brought to light variables that influence the learner on using or not using the tools. A deeper analysis on the current findings is attempted in this study. It adds a psychomotor task; it assesses the actual functionality of the employed tools, and it further explores learner-related variables that…

The meaning of college choice for Latina community college students who transferred to baccalaureate-granting institutions was explored in this dissertation. The methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology informed the process of data collection, which used focus group interviews, individual in-depth interviews, and a researcher reflective journal. …