Developed as a concept in the science of choice, subtle interactions--or "nudges"--can influence people's actions without infringing on their freedom of choice. This article makes the case that not only can the wealth of digital data in higher education nudge students to better achievement and persistence but also that the knowledge embedded in…

In the current object-oriented paradigm, software construction increasingly involves creating and utilizing "software components". These components can serve a variety of functions, from common algorithmic processes to database connectivity to graphical interfaces. The advantage of component architectures is that programmers can use pre-existing…

A growing number of school districts are trying to break up concentrations of poverty on their campuses by taking students' family income into consideration in school assignments. Some of the districts replaced race with socioeconomic status as a determining indicator after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that using race as the primary factor…

Decades of research into which instructional strategies are successful in K-12 history and social studies conclude that having students write is extremely important. Effective writing assignments--whether a 3- to 5-paragraph essay, a longer term-paper-style assignment, or even a fictional short story based on a historical period or event--require…

This study examined the effect of journal writing on mathematics achievement in high-ability students in Singapore. It assessed both the cognitive benefits of journal writing (as evidenced through gains in math test scores) and the socio-affective benefits of journal writing (as demonstrated in their personal reflections) as the students learned…

Part of a larger research project, this article presents a phenomenological self-study exploring the qualities of student engagement that occurred in one professors' college class-room over two semesters' time. The purpose of the study was to better understand college students' engagement in learning utilizing a reflective, data-based process. The…

Using principles underlying the social constructivist approach, we redesigned an undergraduate course on social problems, seeking to employ three learning activities (online assignments and small-group and class discussions) to facilitate knowledge construction by students and promote their intellectual capabilities and critical-thinking skills.…

This study is devoted to the effect of "textual metafunction" on the levels of coherence and cohesion in the Iranian EFL learners' English writing performance. Sixty Iranian intermediate EFL learners who were adult females participated in this study were randomly divided into two groups; experimental, and control. They were given a…

Japanese college students (N = 18) aspiring to become English teachers in junior or senior high schools studied several examples of educational games and created their own English games as an assignment during the last two weeks of an educational psychology course. Results indicated (1) a significant increase between pre- and post-…

This quasi-experimental and pre/posttest study was designed to examine whether fourth-grade students who engaged in collaboratively writing letters to 11th-grade students performed better on tests of conceptual understanding of a unit on force and motion than students who did not. The participants included 835 fourth-grade students and 416…

Educators and researchers are increasingly calling for the processes of writing and knowledge construction to be an integral part of disciplinary learning. This article contributes to the literature by presenting an empirical analysis of a programme that was designed to expose students to the complexities of academic practices in conjunction with…

The objective of this study was to develop an online report writing activity that was a constructive and cooperative learning process for a course on traditional general physics experiments. Wiki, a CMC authoring tool, was used to construct the writing platform. Fifty-eight undergraduate students (33 men and 25 women), working in randomly assigned…

This article reports on our experiences in a German-American partnership in internationalizing the curriculum. In a globalized world, engaging other cultures and identities as well as understanding global issues and events from other perspectives are important qualifications that allow students to gain different insights in political science. Yet,…

The purpose of this study was to identify current practices for the delivery of exercise physiology content at the undergraduate level. An anonymous 22-item survey was sent to instructors of exercise physiology to collect information concerning the structure of course offerings and instructional practices. One hundred ten instructors responded to…

The nine-month study reported in this paper used mixed methods data and a qualitative analysis to examine the skill and perceptual development of 17 graduate design students. Individual differences, perceptions and preferences that apparently promoted rapid and productive development included: design efficacy, mastery goals, preference for…