ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Reflections of Students' Language Usage in Social Networking Sites: Making or Marring Academic English
Author: Thurairaj, Saraswathy
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Language Research,Social Networks,Asians,Ethnic Groups,Code Switching (Language),Spelling,Language Proficiency,Questionnaires,Telecommunications,Surveys,Student Attitudes,Interference (Language),Chinese,Native Language,English (Second Language),Synchronous Communication,Technology Uses in Education,Statistical Analysis,College Students,Foreign Countries,Correlation

Social networking sites (SNSs) have become a major form of communication in today's day and age whereby language use has been impacted in various areas especially in that of learning and teaching. Young users use literally half their week engaging in SNSs communication, thereby giving rise to a brand of internet slang which is entirely their own. This youth-speak has gone on to influence other areas of language usage. The questions asked in the survey increased the identification of the linguistic features such as the frequency of code switching and erratic spelling and leet, thus expanding the research base. The survey participants, the majority of who are from the Chinese ethnic group had experienced mother tongue interference in their English Language proficiency. The descriptive statistical method was used to analyse the questionnaires, wherein the data collected indicated a rather excessive usage of short messaging texts by almost all respondents owning a mobile device. To authenticate the research findings, an analysis of the text discourses was found to be necessary. The findings proved that the frequent use of short messaging had not majorly affected the English language proficiency of the participants. In academic writing there was a conscious effort to stay clear of SNSs language. The mushrooming SNSs has helped create a whole young generation who have their own meta-language, which provides an opportunity to probe to what extent the English language is altered. This research should kick-start research on how the English language in these areas is used and whether the frequent use of it can develop or weaken proficiency in the language. The results of the present study will definitely enrich the corpus of work conducted on the influence of language of social media and encourage further detailed research in this area.
Powerful Practices in Digital Learning Processes
Author: Sørensen, Birgitte Holm
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Electronic Learning,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Foreign Countries,Formative Evaluation,Summative Evaluation,Peer Evaluation,Evaluation Methods,Teaching Methods,Self Evaluation (Individuals),Qualitative Research,Statistical Analysis,Feedback (Response),Elementary Secondary Education,Action Research

The present paper is based on two empirical research studies. The &quot;Netbook 1:1&quot; project (2009-2012), funded by the municipality of Gentofte and Microsoft Denmark, is complete, while &quot;Students' digital production and students as learning designers&quot; (2013-2015), funded by the Danish Ministry of Education, is ongoing. Both projects concern primary and lower secondary school and focus on learning design frameworks that involve students' agency and participation regarding digital production in different subjects and cross-disciplinary projects. Within these teacher-designed frameworks, the students perform as learning designers of learning objects aimed at other students. &quot;Netbook 1:1&quot; has shown that digital and multimodal production especially facilitates student-learning processes and qualifies student-learning results when executed within a teacher-designed framework, which provides space for and empowers students' agency as learning designers. Moreover, the positive impact increases when students as learning designers participate in formative evaluation practices. Traditionally, the Danish school has worked hard to teach students to verbalise their own academic competencies. However, as our everyday environment becomes increasingly complex with digital and multimodal technologies, formative evaluation as a learning practice becomes central, requiring the students to develop a digital and multimodal literacy beyond the traditional, language-centred type. In order to clarify these practices, we address the various understandings of evaluation and assessment that may blur our arguments. &quot;Students' digital production and students as learning designers&quot; is a large-scale project that follows up on the findings of &quot;Netbook 1:1.&quot; It experiments further with various evaluation practices in a digitalised learning environment that focuses on different phases of the learning processes and includes feed-forward and feedback processes. Evaluation as a learning practice in a digitalised learning context focuses on students as actors, addressing their self-reflections, responses to feedback from peers and feedforward processes, and responses to feedback from teachers and feed-forward processes. We find that apart from teacher initiated and planned evaluations, the teachers find it useful to initiate ad-hoc evaluations in order to grab interesting aspects on the fly. At the same time we see students initiate ad-hoc peer-evaluations and make appointments for swopping their work for peer-evaluation.
A Framework for Socio-Scientific Issues Based Education
Author: Presley, Morgan L.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Science Instruction,Scientific Principles,Science and Society,Teaching Methods,Instructional Design,Student Experience,Teacher Characteristics,Curriculum Design,Faculty Development,Teacher Competencies,Classroom Environment,Influences,School Districts,Educational Policy

Science instruction based on student exploration of socio-scientific issues (SSI) has been presented as a powerful strategy for supporting science learning and the development of scientific literacy. This paper presents an instructional framework for SSI based education. The framework is based on a series of research studies conducted in a diverse range of classrooms that made use of several different SSI. Based on the findings and recommendations of these studies, a framework that captures key elements of successful SSI based teaching and learning is advanced. The framework consists of three core aspects--design elements, learner experiences, and teacher attributes which together are shaped by various contexts such as the classroom, the school/district, the community, and state/national policy. The paper describes each of these aspects and provides relevant examples. The framework presents elements necessary for SSI-based instruction with the aim of informing classroom practice, curriculum design, professional development and future research.
Evaluation of a Secondary School Science Program Inversion: Moving from a Traditional to a Modifified-PCB Sequence
Author: Gaubatz, Julie
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Secondary School Science,Program Evaluation,Science Curriculum,Curriculum Evaluation,Sequential Learning,Physics,Chemistry,Biology,Suburban Schools,High School Students,Honors Curriculum,Advanced Placement Programs,Student Placement,Scores,Scientific Principles,Scientific Methodology,Science Process Skills,Scientific Attitudes,Pretests Posttests,Evaluation Criteria,Student Evaluation,Science Tests

Studies of high-school science course sequences have been limited primarily to a small number of site-specific investigations comparing traditional science sequences (e.g., Biology-Chemistry-Physics: BCP) to various Physics First-influenced sequences (Physics-Chemistry-Biology: PCB). The present study summarizes a five-year program evaluation focused on the implementation of a modified-PCB sequence within a moderately large suburban high school, the findings of which highlight the importance of considering context-dependent support of PCB sequence implementations. This modified-PCB program transition was associated with increases in students' honors and Advanced Placement (AP) course enrollments, AP examination scores, understanding of the Nature of Science and experimentation, and self-reported affect toward themselves as learners and toward science in general. By contrast, no differential gains were observed in students' growth as measured by standardized tests (e.g., EXPLORE and ACT science scores). In addition to the program evaluation results associated with this course-sequence change, considerations are outlined related to the complexity of leading large-scale changes in secondary school science programs.
Hearing the Silence: Acknowledging the Voice of My Latina Sisters
Author: Martinez-Vogt, Emily
Date: 2015-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Two Year College Students,Community Colleges,Hispanic American Students,Racial Bias,Ethnic Stereotypes,Student Experience,Identification (Psychology),Social Attitudes,Student Adjustment,Qualitative Research,Interviews,Focus Groups,Observation,Barriers,Student Attitudes,Educational Environment

Latina community college students experience a number of challenges during their transition to college. Findings from a larger study indicated that Latina community college students experienced racism and stereotyping on campus responding with silence. Silence occurred in two ways: (1) Latinas were forced to be silent, and/or (2) Latinas chose to be silent. This article presents the Latina Silence to Resilience Pathway Model illustrating the four phases experienced by Latina community college students beginning with the experience of racism on campus ultimately resulting in personal outcomes. Along the continuum of the model Latinas also often experience an identity transition.
The Scoring of Matching Questions Tests: A Closer Look
Author: Jancarík, Antonín
Date: 2015-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Online Courses,Computer Assisted Testing,Test Items,Scoring Formulas,Scores,Test Wiseness,Multiple Choice Tests,Scoring,Knowledge Level,Comparative Analysis,Usability,Foreign Countries

Electronic testing has become a regular part of online courses. Most learning management systems offer a wide range of tools that can be used in electronic tests. With respect to time demands, the most efficient tools are those that allow automatic assessment. The presented paper focuses on one of these tools: matching questions in which one question can be paired with multiple response terms. The aim of the paper is to identify how the types of questions used in a test can affect student results on such tests expressed as test scores. The authors focus mainly on the issue of the possible increase in scores that can occur with the use of closed questions, when students, after selecting the answers to the questions they know the correct answers to, then guess the answers to the remaining questions (see Diamond and Evans, 1973, Ebel and Frisbie, 1986, Albanese, 1986). The authors show how the number of distractors (unused answers) included in a question influences the overall test score. The data on multiple-choice and alternative- response tests are well known, but not much is known about matching questions. Estimating formula scores for matching-question tests is important for determining the threshold at which students demonstrate they possess the required level of knowledge. Here the authors will compare the scores obtained for three types of closed questions: multiple choice, alternative response and matching questions. The analysis of matching assignments in this paper demonstrates that they are a useful tool for testing skills. However, this holds only if the assignment has at least two distractors. Then the informational value of this type of assignment is higher than that of multiple-choice assignments with three distractors. The results currently indicate that these types of assignment are not useful if the objective of the testing is to rank students or to distinguish between very good students--and this applies even if two distractors are used. In the case of such an objective, it is better to use multiple-choice assignments.
Professional Development Integrating Technology: Does Delivery Format Matter?
Author: Claesgens, Jennifer
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Professional Development,Technology Integration,STEM Education,Science Process Skills,Mathematics Skills,Skill Development,Active Learning,Student Projects,Learning Modules,Problem Solving,Data Collection,Data Analysis,Summer Science Programs,Teaching Methods,Program Implementation,Teacher Effectiveness,Student Improvement,Pretests Posttests,Spatial Ability,Geographic Information Systems,Comparative Analysis,Technology Uses in Education,Influence of Technology,Technological Literacy,Teacher Surveys,Observation

The goal of the two Power of Data (POD) projects was to increase science, technology and math skills through the implementation of project-based learning modules that teach students how to solve problems through data collection and analysis utilizing geospatial technologies. Professional development institutes in two formats were offered to encourage teachers to implement the modules. We compared teacher learning, teacher implementation, and student learning from the two different professional development formats to examine how each format supported teachers to implement the modules, and, ultimately, improve student understanding. Teacher surveys, content and technology assessments, classroom observations, student assessments, and student work samples were analyzed for comparison between a two-week summer institute and monthly meetings held throughout the academic year. Teachers and students from both formats showed improvement in all areas assessed, yet there was not a large effect on student outcomes based on the delivery format between the professional development sessions.
Using Middle School Test Scores to Predict Success in Ninth Grade Biology
Author: McDowell, Lorrie D.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Grade 9,Scores,Middle School Students,Predictor Variables,Biology,Science Instruction,Criterion Referenced Tests,Correlation,Science Achievement,Statistical Analysis,Rural Schools,Regression (Statistics)

Success in ninth grade is essential to a student's success throughout high school. Many high schools retain the traditional science course sequence of teaching biology first to ninth graders who may or may not be cognitively ready for today's biology content. A few school districts in Georgia are offering a flexible science course sequence in the ninth grade, using test scores or other data to determine the course in which a student will be most likely to be successful. This study used regression analysis to determine whether seventh grade life science Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) scores are an effective predictor of success in ninth grade biology as measured by the biology End-of-Course Test (EOCT). The analysis indicated a strong positive correlation between life science CRCT scores and biology EOCT scores. The regression equation provides a method to predict students' estimated biology EOCT score and academic success in that course. This gives educators the ability to guide students to the course of science study at which they are likely to be most successful.
Effectiveness of Geosciences Exploration Summer Program (GeoX) for Increasing Awareness and Knowledge of Geosciences
Author: Houser, Chris
Date: 2015-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Program Effectiveness,Earth Science,Summer Science Programs,Science Education,STEM Education,High School Students,Student Participation,Knowledge Level,Student Improvement,Parent Influence,Student Attitudes,Scientific Attitudes,Student Surveys,Parent Surveys

Summer research experiences are an increasingly popular means of increasing awareness of, and developing interest in, the geosciences and other science, technology, engineering, and math programs. We describe and report the preliminary results of a 1-wk Geosciences Exploration Summer Program in the College of Geosciences at Texas A&amp;M University to introduce high-school students to opportunities and careers in the geosciences. Short-term indicators in the form of preprogram and postprogram surveys of participants and their parents suggest that there is an increase in participant understanding of geosciences and interest in pursuing a degree in the geosciences. The participants and their parents had relatively limited knowledge of the geosciences at the start of the program, and very few had a friend or acquaintance employed in the geosciences, despite the importance of geosciences to the state economy. Postprogram survey results suggest that the students had an improved and nuanced understanding of the geosciences and the career opportunities within the field. A survey of the parents several months after the program had ended suggests that the parents had greater awareness of the geosciences through conversations with the participants or their own research. Although the influence of the parents on a students' decision to study geoscience is unclear and merits further investigation, it is concluded that future offerings of this and similar programs should engage the parents to ensure that the geosciences are recognized as a potential academic and career path.
Examining the Effectiveness of Team-Based Learning (TBL) in Different Classroom Settings
Author: Yuretich, Richard F.
Date: 2015-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Cooperative Learning,Teamwork,College Students,Higher Education,Active Learning,Educational Assessment,Thinking Skills,Educational Technology,Comparative Analysis,Academic Achievement

The problem of effective learning in college classrooms, especially in a large lecture setting, has been a topic of discussion for a considerable span of time. Most efforts to improve learning incorporate various forms of student-active learning, such as in-class investigations or problems, group discussions, collaborative examinations and interactive technology such as i-clicker. Team-Based Learning (TBL) is a classroom paradigm that all but eliminates the standard lecture and shifts exams from an end-of-unit exercise to a preparatory role. Adapting TBL to an introductory oceanography course has yielded mixed results. Student satisfaction as measured by course evaluations has increased in several important indicators, but not in summative questions. Final grades have also continued at high levels, and discussions around in-class investigations have become increasingly sophisticated, but performance on certain exam components associated with higher-order learning has declined. The classroom environment may play a major role, with TBL showing greater effectiveness in a TBL-designed facility compared with a traditional auditorium.
Progress on Implementing Inquiry in North Carolina: Nearly 1,000 Elementary, Middle and High School Science Teachers Weigh In
Author: Blanchard, Margaret R.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Science Education,Science Instruction,Inquiry,Teaching Methods,Science Teachers,Elementary Secondary Education,Teacher Surveys,Science Process Skills,Instructional Program Divisions,Science Curriculum,Curriculum Implementation,Rating Scales,Barriers,Context Effect

Engaging students in inquiry-based science is a potentially powerful way for students to understand science-as-practice (Lehrer &amp; Schauble, 2006; NRC, 2007). Students who gain a more meaningful understanding of the processes of science will be more prepared citizens as consumers, science enthusiasts, or civic minded participants (Toumey et al., 2010; Wickson et al., 2010). The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of inquiry across the state and all K-12 grade levels. Teachers across North Carolina were surveyed as to factors contributing to their use of inquiry and what supported or constrained their use of inquiry. The research questions were: (1) To what extent do teachers report preparation in inquiry and employing inquiry in their science teaching; (2) Does teachers' use of inquiry vary by student level; and (3) What contextual factors do teachers indicate relate to their inquiry implementation? This research analyzed 977 surveys to determine the extent to which teachers report employing inquiry in their science teaching, how their use of inquiry varies by student level, and what contextual factors relate to teachers' inquiry implementation.
The Effect of Modeling and Visualization Resources on Student Understanding of Physical Hydrology
Author: Marshall, Jilll A.
Date: 2015-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Earth Science,Science Instruction,Scientific Concepts,Concept Formation,College Science,College Students,Homework,Student Projects,Computer Software,Educational Technology,Visualization,Models,Comparative Analysis,Multivariate Analysis,Pretests Posttests,Teaching Methods,Science Achievement,Instructional Effectiveness,Interviews,Coding,Scaffolding (Teaching Technique),Physics,Geology,Statistical Analysis,Qualitative Research

We investigated the effect of modeling and visualization resources on upper-division, undergraduate and graduate students' performance on an open-ended assessment of their understanding of physical hydrology. The students were enrolled in one of five sections of a physical hydrology course. In two of the sections, students completed homework problems and projects using only Excel (Microsoft, Redmond, WA) or MATLAB (MathWorks, Natick, MA) as modeling resources, and in the other three sections, some of the homework exercises were replaced with modeling and visualization activities using the interactive modeling software COMSOL Multiphysics (COMSOL, Burlington, MA). Other aspects of the course (instructor, syllabus coverage, lectures, and textbook) remained the same throughout the study. We performed a repeated-measures analysis of variance, which showed that gains from pretest to posttest were statistically significant overall and were independent of the section in which students were enrolled for all but one component on the assessment. In that case, students who did not have access to the COMSOL modules marginally outperformed the others, but not to the required level of statistical significance. These results were complemented by a qualitative investigation of students' interaction with the modeling software. We interviewed a subset of students and assigned codes to themes that arose when we analyzed the resulting transcripts. This process allowed us to develop a theory of how students were interacting with the modeling and visualization resources. A significant theme was the issue of ''scaffolding,'' or supports, with both positive and negative consequences for students, depending on their personal preferences and previous experience.