The role that student friendship groups play in learning was investigated here. Employing a critical realist design, two focus groups on undergraduates were conducted to explore their experience of studying. Data from the "case-by-case" analysis suggested student-to-student friendships produced social contexts which facilitated conceptual understanding through discussion, explanation, and appli...

Practicum is a significant component of teacher education which links theory to practice and prepares student teachers for their job. The purpose of the courses, as defined within the Curriculum of Teacher Education at Farhangian University, is to prepare student teachers for their teaching career by observing and analyzing the real situation at schools and relating it to their theoretical ...

This article addresses the issue of student writing in higher education. It draws on the findings of an Economic and Social Research Council funded project which examined the contrasting expectations and interpretations of academic staff and students regarding undergraduate students' written assignments. It is suggested that the implicit models that have generally been used to understand studen...

The value of experiential learning in agricultural education has long been recognized as an important part of the educational process. Through practice and experience students apply what they have learned in real situations, thus the material becomes understandable and usable. Moreover, in the process of gaining experience, new problems and situations arise causing learners to seek additional i...

Background—The Iowa Department of Education undertook a study to determine district characteristics that are associated with success on statewide-standardized tests. A district profile was created for each Iowa public school district to determine if any association exists between a particular district’s characteristics and the test scores of 11th grade students. Contextual variables such as soc...

BACKGROUND The number of medical undergraduates taking part in Student Scientific Activities (SSA) at Jessenius Faculty of Medicine Comenius University in Slovakia remains low. The aim of this study was to discover some of the factors responsible and suggest improvements. METHODS An anonymous 30-item questionnaire was devised and sent to 245 medical undergraduates (UG) of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd an...

Although the rise in subprime lending and the ensuing wave of foreclosures was partly a result of market forces that have been well-identified in the literature, in the United States it was also a highly racialized process. We argue that residential segregation created a unique niche of poor minority clients who were differentially marketed risky subprime loans that were in great demand for use...

PROBLEM The field of health care is becoming a team effort as patient care becomes increasingly complex and multifaceted. Despite the need for multidisciplinary education, there persists a lack of student engagement and collaboration among health care disciplines, which presents a growing concern as students join the workforce. APPROACH In October 2013, the Emory-Georgia Tech Healthcare Innov...

This article examines the impact of digital technologies on student support in distance and e-learning, drawing on the case of Open University UK. Giving a historical perspective on the use of technologies in learning over many centuries, it argues that the dominant paradigm of geography -which has defined the structures for student support services in second generation distance educationhas no...

The current paper discuses the potential use of Wiki as an environment for the formation of student models during distance education sessions. The idea of student models is not novel, rather their benefits in distance education. Wiki has already been used in a number of Education scenarios and projects, either as an authoring or a teaching tool. The paper discusses the appropriateness of Wiki t...