Since decades, nursing education struggles with a persistent gap between the theoretical knowledge offered in the study program and its application in professional practice. To bridge this gap competence-based curricula were developed with instructional designs as authentic learning contexts and self-directed learning. In this project we explored…

Teaching biology is characterized by a great number of concepts and facts. It is very difficult to concisely represent all important concepts and facts. In order to effectively present important concepts such as pollination and pollinators, concept maps have been applied. In particular, the pedagogical experiment was applied to determine whether…

This study investigates how 19 third-grade students developed their understandings of enslavement during a six-week social studies inquiry. Using Teaching Tolerance's key concepts as my analytic framework, I analyzed the students' pre- and post-concept maps and classwork to understand their learning. The findings show that students conceptualized…

Machine translation (MT) provides a seemingly accelerated alternative way to communicate in the target language (L2). A convenient service to the public, MT renders a potential disservice to language learners. In this pedagogically focused article, we show concrete and detailed examples of how language instructors can turn MT and other electronic…

The main issue addressed in this paper is how to improve the learning situation of self-directed learning in resource search and organization from the web. In this paper, we have firstly proposed a multi-layer map model that visualizes basic learning behaviors when using the web for locating and organizing learning resources. It provides learners…

Momentum is a foundational concept in physics. Although it is often taught in introductory mechanics courses, there are a limited number of studies on this topic in the literature. The results from these studies have consistently shown that students have difficulties in understanding momentum, especially the connections between net force, time,…

Didactic lecture is an effective method to quickly pass on a high volume of information to a large number of students. However, if not well designed, lectures can be monotonous and provide only passive learning, with little scope for higher order learning skills. To address this drawback of lectures, we supplemented it with case-based learning…

The important role of vocabulary has long been established in second language acquisition, and many theories have been proposed for vocabulary teaching and learning. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of concept mapping and notebook keeping on self-regulation in vocabulary learning. To this aim, 90 female language learners in three…

Creativity has become an increasingly important competence in today's rapidly changing times, especially for school graduates who strive for pursuing a technical or scientific career. But creativity has not been integrated in the lessons or curricula of STEM subjects. To successfully integrate it in the classroom, it is important to investigate…

The purpose of this study was to design and develop a theory-based summary writing online tool, named Summary Writing-Pal (SW-PAL), to assist English as a second language students in improving their summary writing. It also evaluates the effectiveness of SW-PAL in enhancing the students' summary writing performance and examines their perceptions…

In an attempt to develop a metacognitive writing questionnaire, Farahian (2015) conducted a study which was based on the results obtained from a semi-structured interview (Maftoon, Birjandi & Farahian, 2014). After running various exploratory factor analyses (EFA) to validate the questionnaire two general scales of knowledge and regulation of…

Despite widespread agreement among ELT researchers that vocabulary lies at the heart of communicative competence, currently no consensus exists as to how learning of previously presented lexical items can be guaranteed. Given the inconclusiveness of findings, the present study attempted to delve into the differences in the learning of target…

This interlanguage study examines the L2 mental lexicon of Thai EFL learners with different degrees of language exposure--i.e., the high exposure group and the low exposure group. The scores from the English Language Exposure (ELE) Questionnaire were used to select the two groups of participants. To explore the lexical processing and the…

Effective reading strategies, including using graphic organizers, question answering, and considering story structures, can help students improve reading comprehension. However, these reading strategies are not fully supported by both printed books and e-books. Students who master these reading strategies can learn effectively. By contrast,…

This study examines four elements of learner motivation, attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction, in an EFL speaking course that uses the computer mediated communication (CMC) tool Google Hangouts. The study found that a preparatory concept mapping task before the CMC sessions improved students' perceived attention, relevance,…