Preventing Teacher and Counselor Burnout: Self-Care in Training Programs
A Study of Intervention Math Labs and STAAR Math Growth Scores in a South Texas Rural Middle School
Turkish EFL Teachers' Perceptions of their Pedagogical Digital Competence in an EFL Setting
Brief Report: Targeting the Social Communication Skills of an Autistic Adolescent with a Co-Occurring ADHD Diagnosis using Two Formats of a Social Story
The Effectiveness of GeoGebra Assisted Learning on Students' Mathematical Representation: A Meta-Analysis Study
Towards Quality Higher Education in the Arab World: Challenges of the Present and Aspirations of the Future
Edification Of Multimedia Resources: Aligning Technology For Student Empowerment
Continuous Classroom Assessment At Primary Level
An Empirical Consideration Of The Use Of R In Actively Constructing Sampling Distributions
Improving Quality In Teaching Statistics Concepts Using Modern Visualization: The Design And Use Of The Flash Application On Pocket PCs
The Roles of Artificial Intelligence in Education: Current Progress and Future Prospects
The Role of Web-Based Simulations In Technology Education
Development Of Learning Resources To Promote Knowledge Sharing In Problem Based Learning
Fishing For Learning With A Podcast Net
An Orientation Assistant (OA) for Guiding Learning through Simulation of Electronics Technology in Technology Education
The benefits of motivation, mental imagery, self-monitoring and guided retellings on reading comprehension have long been lauded as effective methods for improving reading achievement. At a time when technology continues to flourish, yet secondary reading performance remains at a level far below proficiency, identifying strategies that assist in efforts to advance middle school readers via digital resources is critical. This work, therefore, links these influential ideas and presents a promising approach for working with struggling readers. The use of technological devices during mental imagery activity and self-monitoring tasks is introduced and encouraged as a best practice when reading narrative and informational text. As narrative story elements and/or expository text structures are encountered, struggling middle school readers curate digital images that represent mental pictures that are internally and socially constructed during the reading process. This collection of digital images is then utilized as a motivating resource and aid for adequately supporting and enhancing retellings of text.
This study focused on feelings of threat and challenge among pre-service teachers in different learning environments – virtual and blended courses. The two goals of this study were (1) to define the subjects' feelings in virtual and blended learning environments, and the relationship between them, and (2) to examine how their feelings changed between the beginning and end of either type of course. A sense of ‘threat and challenge’ points to the pre-service teachers' reaction to their learning environment and its characteristics, and reflects their ability to cope with the learning process, satisfaction, and perseverance. This quantitative study included 578 participants, who filled out questionnaires at the beginning and end of each course. Three major factors were found to describe their perception of the situation: negative feelings, sense of threat, and sense of challenge. A positive relationship was found between sense of threat and negative feelings, and a negative relationship was found between sense of challenge and negative feelings. Significant interactions were found for situation perceptions of both learning environments. Participants in the virtual course exhibited less negative feelings at its end. A similar result was found for sense of threat. In contrast, the students' sense of challenge increased by the end of the virtual course. These findings support the view that negative feelings and threat among students in virtual courses can be improved by means of cognitive strategies and meaningful effectiveness.
The current study sought to critically address the practice of rituals of distinction in nation-wide educational milieus to see if such practices can produce generations of underdeveloped and deprived learners. Data were collected over a course of two years from North Korea, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Somalia. A total of 419 teachers, educators and students from these countries responded to email communication, were observed through participant observation, or were interviewed through Skype; they provided descriptions and examples of educational settings and practices in their respective countries. The data were then analyzed qualitatively and in the light of (a) Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives, (b) Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and (c) Feuerstein's notion of ‘culturally deprived’ learners. It was concluded that, education systems in countries ruled by ideological or ideocratic regimes, intentionally and actively deprive learner generations of quality education with the aim of hammering whole societies into the shape which will guarantee their own grip on political power. Drawing on the concepts of 'small-c culture' and 'capital-c culture' from relevant literature, the paper argues that despotic regimes, by virtue of their education systems, mainly betray their most obedient citizens who are committed to them and whereby deprive them of true professionalism.
Rushing efforts are taken by developing and under-developed countries to match educational standards of developed countries. Education is a life-long activity and continuing process for which necessary steps are initiated to offer and gain with minimum cost of resources. Creating Open Educational Resources (OER) is preferably right choice in all circumstances, especially in countries like India that has a huge population to educate. Among the many teachinglearning materials, a collection of questions asked in previous examinations called as question bank is one of the needful resource used by all categories of students and teachers. Hence, this study attempted to construct a Web-based Past Examination Question Bank (WPQB) for selected subjects with customized search facilities, and further the constructed website was evaluated to confirm the usefulness among the students and teachers. Realizing its necessity in an Indian Educational Environment, the present study was carried out to create a model WPQB and to evaluate its utility through a web based survey. The findings of the study proved that, the WPQB is useful among the students and teachers for improving the answering ability and questioning skill respectively. Moreover, the customized search facility and organization of questions were agreed as important features of the web based question bank.
Item analysis of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) is the process of collecting, summarizing and utilizing information from students' responses to evaluate the quality of test items. Difficulty Index (p-value), Discrimination Index (DI) and Distractor Efficiency (DE) are the parameters which help to evaluate the quality of MCQs used in an examination. This study has been postulated to investigate the relationship of items having good p-value and DI with their DE and their utility to frame 'ideal questions'. This study further evaluates the MCQs as a tool of assessment so as to improve the curricula in Medical Education. In this study, 20 test items of ‘Type A’ MCQ tests of assessment were selected. The p-values, DI and DE were estimated. The relationship between the p-value and DI for each test item was determined by Pearson correlation analysis. Mean p-value and DI of the test were 66.53 ± 16.82% and 0.41 ± 0.16% respectively. Only 20% of total test items crossed the p-value of 80% indicative of their easy difficulty level. 95% of the test items showed acceptable (> 0.2) DI. 12 out of 20 test items showed excellent DI (≥ 0.4). 8 (40%) test items were regarded as ‘ideal’ having p-value from 30- 70, and DI > 0.24. Correlation studies revealed that, DI associated with p-value (r = -0.288; P = 0.219). Mean DE of the test was 76.25 ± 22.18%. The DE was directly related to the DI. Items with good and excellent DI had DE of 66.67 ± 14.43% and 83.33 ± 19.46% respectively. In conclusion, an acceptable level of test difficulty and discrimination was maintained in the type A MCQ test. The test items with excellent discrimination tend to be in the moderately difficult range. There was a consistent spread of difficulty in type A MCQ items used for the test. Much more of these kinds of analysis should be carried out after each examination to identify the areas of potential weakness in the type A MCQ tests to improve the standard of assessment.
