This pilot study aimed to test the well-being effects of a locally developed mindfulness-based program tailored for New Zealand elementary school children in comparison with an active control condition. It was hypothesized that significantly greater well-being change scores would be observed for the mindfulness group. Students (n = 106) between 9…

With additional features and increasing cost advantages, e-textbooks are becoming a viable alternative to paper textbooks. One important feature offered by enhanced e-textbooks (e-textbooks with interactive functionality) is the ability for instructors to annotate passages with additional insights. This paper describes a pilot study that examines…

Development education has a long and well-established trajectory in terms of initiatives promoted by international organizations, national governments and civil associations, accompanied by a growing awareness of the significance of global issues. Nevertheless, an analysis of the education policy reflected in the official Spanish and English…

The aim of this analysis was to determine from a pilot project whether a new style of course-connected learning support for students in gateway STEM courses could be more successful on the University of Rhode Island's campus than the traditional Supplemental Instruction (SI) model. The new model, Weekly Tutoring Groups (WTG), addressed several of…

Success in undergraduate biology courses relies upon a firm grounding in chemical principles. We sought to raise students' awareness of the connection between these two disciplines and to improve their understanding of each by carrying out a pilot project that integrated the curricula of Principles of Chemistry II (CHEM1212K) and Principles of…

The concept of Learning Analytics, as we understand it today, is relatively new but the practice of evaluating user behavior is not innovative. For years, technological development, along with other educational aspects, have encouraged, developed and facilitated this practice as a way of providing a personalized quality experience to students. The…

The flipped classroom pedagogy offers opportunities for students by having the majority of class time spent on discussions and group work that enable students to take risks and make mistakes while gaining experience in collaboration and expertise in content. This research study explores students' perceptions of whether student collaboration in a…

Peer feedback is a useful strategy in teaching and learning, but its effectiveness particularly in introductory courses can be limited by the relative newness of students to both the body of knowledge upon which they are being asked to provide feedback and the skill set involved in providing good feedback. This paper applies a novel approach to…

Teacher wellbeing and performance is affected by their ability to cope with the demands of the profession. This pilot non-randomized, waitlist-controlled study investigated the impact of a mindfulness intervention (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) on teachers' wellbeing, self-regulation ability and classroom performance applying a mixed-method…

Assessing student learning in university courses is commonly done using a rubric that arranges the assessment criteria and standards descriptors in a matrix style or grid format. This paper introduces an alternative style of grading tool known as the continua model of a guide to making judgements, which arranges assessment criteria based on a…

This pilot is a pre/post comparative assessment of a leadership course developed and delivered using an innovative, ontological/phenomenological model of education. Participants in the course delivered in Singapore in July of 2014 provided measures of the effectiveness of their leadership before and after the course, using a scale from 1 (least…

The purpose of this study was to pilot test the effects of a culturally adapted early intervention influenced by the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) on reduction of autism symptoms and severity categorization for young children with autism spectrum disorders in China. Participants were randomly assigned to either the control or intervention…

Background and Context: Vygotsky's sociocultural theory emphasises the importance of language, mediation, and the transfer of skills and knowledge from the social into the cognitive plane. This perspective has influenced the development of PRIMM (Predict, Run, Investigate, Modify, Make), a structured approach to teaching programming. Objective:…

Research has indicated differences in prosodic expression for infants-at-risk-of-autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and it has been proposed that caregiver speech to these infants may also be moderated prosodically. In typical development, the pitch range of maternal infant-directed speech (IDS) narrows and utterance intensity decreases with infant…

Purpose: Universidad San Francisco de Quito, USFQ, completed an assessment study to understand its performance in sustainability in 2012. This study aims to recognize the limitations of applying a North American rating system considering relevant criteria to a South American university and to emphasize the importance and lack of benchmarks…