Open Source, E-Textbooks, Traditional Texts… oh my!
September 29th, 2009
What exactly are open source textbooks? How are they different than e-textbooks? How do both compare to traditional texts? The Education Commission for the States has a nice new report out that compares open source to e-textbooks, and looks at initiatives in states that are adopting either or both.
I’ve been a proponent of the [...]
Tags: open source, textbooks
Posted in Curriculum and Materials | Comments (0)
Predicting eLearning Dropout
September 23rd, 2009
Despite its promise, a continuing challenge to online learning/ distance learning/ and eLearning is student dropout. Studies have consistently found higher student dropout rates in these courses than in in-person courses. There have been numerous studies attempting to predict dropout, but few have gotten to the holy grail of being able to identify students who [...]
Tags: dropout
Posted in Students | Comments (0)
Development of Help-Seeking
September 21st, 2009
Help! How do I…?
The use of help features in computer-based learning has been an issue of recent research. Learning outcomes appear to be at least partially dependent on available support, and help-seeking on the part of students is seen as a positive sign of self-regulated learning. How do students ask for help? Are there developmental [...]
Tags: eLearning, help
Posted in Students, Technology | Comments (0)
Humor in Teaching
September 16th, 2009
OK, stop me if you’ve heard this one… three statisticians walk into a bar…
Is statistics funny? Neumann, Hood, & Neumann (2009) think they can make it funny, and sought to find out how students reacted to including humor in statistics classes. (It should be noted that this article is from a Journal of Statistics Education “Research to Practice” [...]
Tags: humor, statistics education
Posted in Teachers | Comments (4)
States Getting In on International Testing
September 14th, 2009
It seems like at least once a month we get headlines blaring one of two things: 1) U.S. STUDENTS PERFORM POORLY COMPARED TO OTHER NATIONS or 2) [STATE] IS RANKED [X] IN EDUCATION TEST SCORES. Well, now there is some movement to combine these two headlines and have states participate in international testing.
Currently, international testing [...]
Posted in Policy/ Government | Comments (0)
Failing at Ill-Structured Problems
September 9th, 2009
When is it good to let students fail? Is there something good that happens when students struggle and don’t succeed? These questions are explored by Kapur & Kinzur (2008) in the International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.
At a high level, they have groups of students randomly assigned to work on physics problems in triads on [...]
Tags: failure, ill-structured problems
Posted in Curriculum and Materials, Students | Comments (0)
Teachers’ Views of Homework and Effects on Students
September 4th, 2009
What do teachers think is the primary purpose of homework? How much do they think parents should be involved? How do those attitudes effect student effort and achievement?
A group of researchers studying teachers in Switzerland (hey! a non-US study!) conducted a survey of 93 teachers of French as a second language. Their survey included scales [...]
Posted in Students, Teachers | Comments (0)
Are you polite on discussion boards?
September 3rd, 2009
How do people interact on discussion boards in an education setting? In my experience, people are much more polite and restrained in classroom discussion boards than on more general boards on the web. It turns out that politeness is actually a construct studied by sociolinguists. They define it in the context of discussion boards as [...]
Posted in Students, Technology | Comments (0)
Recent Posts
- Games and Simulation in Science
- Simulations and Labs: Either/or?
- Open Source, E-Textbooks, Traditional Texts… oh my!
- Predicting eLearning Dropout
- Development of Help-Seeking
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