I have taught and conducted research in online learning for a number of years. I currently teach an online class (Human Abilities in Learning, aka HAL Online) in which undergraduates study conceptual material about the science of learning, then deepen their understanding of the material by using it in small-group collaborative problem solving that takes place asynchronously online. Important co...

When attempting to identify educational settings that are most effective in improving student achievement, classroom process (that is, the way in which a teacher interacts with his or her students) is a key feature of interest. Unfortunately, high-quality assessment of the student-teacher interaction occurs all too infrequently, despite the critical role that understanding and measuring such pr...

A traditional classroom-based course was transitioned during three semesters to a Web-enhanced and then a Web-based course. This nutrition course was part of the core curriculum for 58 undergraduate nursing students. Evaluation data were collected and analyzed to compare the effectiveness of the traditional classroom, Web-enhanced, and Web-based courses. Areas of evaluation included mid-term an...

Research shows that self-efficacy is an important concept which influences a teacher’s ability to teach and the effectiveness with which the teaching is done. Each teacher trainee has a sense of efficacy with regards to teaching which is influenced by many factors. This study aimed to determine the teaching self-efficacy of third-year teacher education students in three categories: student enga...

This comparative analysis of teacher-student interaction in two different instructional settings at the elementary-school level (18.3 hr in French immersion and 14.8 hr Japanese immersion) investigates the immediate effects of explicit correction, recasts, and prompts on learner uptake and repair. The results clearly show a predominant provision of recasts over prompts and explicit correction, ...

This paper summarizes the design and evaluation of an instructional approach aimed at improving the writing skills of a group of undergraduate engineering students. We sought to determine whether student performance in difficult writing skills such as argumentation and synthesis could be improved by integrating a single writing exercise into an upper level engineering course. In designing the e...

To improve undergraduate mathematics learning, teachers need to recognize and value characteristics of classroom learning environments that contribute to powerful student learning. The broad goal of this special issue is to share such characteristics and the theoretical and empirical grounding for an innovative approach in differential equations called the Inquiry Oriented Differential Equation...

Over the course of instruction, instructors generally collect a great deal of information about each student. Integrating that information intelligently requires models for how a student’s proficiency changes over time. Armed with such models, instructors can filter the data—more accurately estimate the student’s current proficiency levels—and forecast the student’s future proficiency levels. T...

Professional skills are vital to preparing engineers for their careers, but how well do we teach and assess them in our professional programs? Many design faculty are unclear about the required skills, how to develop them, and how to assess them. In response to this need, the Integrated Design Engineering Assessment and Learning System (IDEALS) promotes professional skills in a semi-authentic c...