While a great deal has been written on the advantage and benefits of online teaching, little is known on how assessment is implemented in online classrooms to monitor and inform performance and progress. The purpose of this study is to investigate the dynamics of WebCT classroom assessment by analyzing the perceptions and experience of the…

The purpose of the present paper is to explore how distance education has diffused in north Cyprus. In this paper, Rogers' diffusion theory (1995) was used to analyze the acceptance and implementation of distance education in institutions of higher learning in north Cyprus. The four main elements of the diffusion paradigm--the innovation,…

One of the major goals in deaf education is to teach deaf and hard of hearing students the tools and strategies to solve mathematical word problems. A mathematical word problem curriculum was designed and implemented based on telling, reading and writing number tales in American Sign Language (ASL) and English. The learning experiences helped…

Rasch measurement can provide a much needed solution to scaling teacher ability. Typically, decisions about teacher ability are based on dichotomously scored certification tests focused on knowledge of content or pedagogy. This paper presents early developmental work of a partial credit teacher ability scale of 42 tasks (performances and…

In this paper, the following key questions will be examined. What is distinctive about cooperative learning, which makes it different from just groupwork? What has research found about the effectiveness of cooperative learning in promoting thinking? What conditions in cooperative learning help promote thinking? What theoretical perspectives…

The research and the study focus on the problem of dissociated learning. Why do students fail to connect with knowledge? The purposes of the study are: to summarize research pertaining to brain growth; to describe educational approaches and tactics consistent with this research; to test a brain research-based program designed to connect children…

A new standard setting method, Mapmark, was recently developed by ACT Inc. in the course of a contract with the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) to set achievement levels for the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Grade 12 mathematics. Mapmark includes elements of the bookmark method (Lewis, Mitzel, & Green, 1996;…

This article describes an investigation with a class of seventh graders to determine what impact the study of traditional literature would have on their narrative writing. The classroom teacher emphasized the narrative structure of the traditional literature genre by prompting his students to respond both orally and in writing with their thoughts…

Rauding theory states that two factors, accuracy and rate, explain nearly all the variance in the general reading ability of American schoolchildren (Carver, 1999). Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and regression, this dissertation investigated to what extent the Rauding model could be applied to 92 Japanese university aged young adults…

One of the problems in re-imagining the educology of teacher education lies in how we talk about theory and practice. Often theory and practice are spoken about as if they are opposites of each other, and sometimes they are--in the sense that each has to compete with the other in terms of time. Even when there is general agreement that both theory…

The main purpose of this paper is to explore and discuss the main characteristics of project-based online learning (PBOL) for a graduate enchased Web-based course, Designing and Developing Distance Education, to promote the critical learning skills of online learners to engage them in projects designed to be realistic, intriguing and relevant real…

The 20th National Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia (SPERA) and Western Australia District High School Administrators' Association (WADHSAA) joint conference proceedings, based on the theme "Working Together, Staying Vital," was held in Fremantle, Perth, Western Australia, in June 2004. The proceedings contain 13…

The aim of this research project has been to map the range of perceptions of a sample of people concerning business in partnership with education. From the range of perceptions held by the participants in this dissertation, we can conclude that partnering is not a simple matter of two parties agreeing to some workable union between them for mutual…

The research was conducted in Sydney and Hong Kong using students, from grades 5 to 9, whose first language or teaching medium was English, learning to read Chinese as second language. According to cognitive load theory, the processing of single Chinese characters accompanied by pictures should impose extraneous cognitive load and thus hinders…

The papers contained in this document represent the keynote addresses, refereed and non-refereed conference papers from the 22nd National Conference of Society for the Provision of Education in Rural Australia (SPERA). The theme for this national conference was: Community Diversity and Innovation in Rural and Remote Education and Training. Keynote…