Learning student names has been promoted as an inclusive classroom practice, but it is unknown whether students value having their names known by an instructor. We explored this question in the context of a high-enrollment active-learning undergraduate biology course. Using surveys and semistructured interviews, we investigated whether students perceived that instructors know their names, the i...

When facilitating asynchronous discussion forums, should online instructors be encouraged to take a prominent ‘sage on the stage’ role, a more constructivist ‘guide on the side’ role, or an ultra low profile as ‘the ghost in the wings’? There is no shortage of anecdotal advice on how to conduct discussion forums in online education, but there appears to be very little research available so far ...

Efforts by universities in sub-Sahara Africa to promote professional development of instructors in course design and delivery by e-learning technologies have often lacked meaningful impacts. This study investigated the impact of collaborative course design on instructors’ professional learning about design and delivery of e-learning courses at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT). Six Teacher ...

This study investigated undergraduate pre-semester instructional expectations of two types of introductory biology course instructors based on four titles (faculty member [FM], graduate teaching assistant [GTA], lecture instructor, laboratory instructor). Data were collected via an online survey administered before students had met their instructors. All students enrolled in first-semester non-...

This study aims at investigating the effect of dynamic assessment (DA) on L2 writing achievement if applied via blogging as a Web 2.0 tool, as well as examining which pattern of interaction is more conducive to learning in such an environment. The results of the study indicate that using weblogs to provide mediation contributes to the enhancement of the overall writing performance, vocabulary a...

University science teachers’ technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) is crucial for effective teaching. Although there has been a plethora of studies investigating pre-service and in-service teachers’ TPACK, few studies have examined university instructors’ TPACK and university students’ perceptions of instructors’ TPACK. The main purpose of this study was to examine the TPACK q...

This study sought to investigate dynamic assessment (DA) - an assessment approach that embeds inter- vention within the assessment process and that yields information about the learner’s responsiveness to this intervention - and the writing performance of the second language (L2) learners in Web 2.0 contexts. To this end, pre and post-treatment writings of 45 par...

the newly administered iranian ph.d. program entrance exam (ppee) is supposed to have had different washback effects on university curriculums. this qualitative study examined the effects of the new tefl ppee on the applicants’ study plans and strategies from the points of view of both iranian university instructors and applicants. to this end, we conducted in-depth interviews with 10 experienc...

Students' religious beliefs and religious cultures have been shown to be the main factors predicting whether they will accept evolution, yet college biology instructors teaching evolution at public institutions often have religious beliefs and cultures that are different from their religious students. This difference in religious beliefs and cultures may be a barrier to effective evolution educ...

background and aims. recent progresses in preventive dentistry and their correct application in many developed countries have remarkably decreased the rate of oro-dental diseases in children and teenagers, while the rate of oro-dental diseases is on the rise among the children in developing countries. the aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of educating school health care instructors b...