Once in the workforce, teachers are often asked to participate in school-based adolescent dating violence prevention efforts. However, our understanding of how willing and able future teachers are to engage in dating violence prevention is limited. This may be due, in part, to the lack of available measurement tools. Understanding willingness…

The current study sought to evaluate the SASTSc in two samples of students taking a statistics course that incorporates statistical software. The SASTSc was given at two time points, once at the beginning of the semester and then again at the end of the semester. Our evaluation included examining competing factor analytic models, examining…

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) gather crucial feedback on student experiences of teaching and learning and have been used for decades to evaluate the quality of teaching and student experience of instruction. In this paper, we make the case for an important improvement to the analysis of SET data that can further refine its interpretation.…

This study aimed at building a reliable and valid scale for environmental factors related to student persistence in online courses, particularly relevant for adults or lifelong learners. Drawing on the social integration and external attribution scales and subscales of Kember et al. as a starting point, data collected in Canadian universities were…

Existing measures of test anxiety used with the college student population are old with old norms and old items, and they do not capture the multiple dimensions of the test anxiety construct or assess facilitating anxiety. In the present study, the validity of the scores of a new, multidimensional measure of test anxiety with a facilitating…

Purpose: Students' use of blogging tools in learning environments is increasing across the world. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature by examining the effects of relevant factors that engender satisfaction and positive impacts of the technology for learning. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional survey was used to…

We compared seven unrelated data-sets to evaluate a major education improvement initiative. Perceptions of students in 54 course sections were surveyed regarding the helpfulness of 39 specific teaching or learning strategies, and relative workloads and enthusiasm were compared to their other courses. Classes were observed using an established…

This paper considers the use of a simple assignment, the personal narrative, in teaching students the discursive issues involved in doing academic history. Focusing on autobiography, I present the results of a survey of Canadian university students into their experiences with writing personal histories. Specifically, the survey asked students to…

Interest in student conception of experimentation inspired the development of a fully validated 14-question inventory on experimental design in biology (BEDCI) by following established best practices in concept inventory (CI) design. This CI can be used to diagnose specific examples of non-expert-like thinking in students and to evaluate the…

The research presented in this paper is part of a 5-year renewable national research program in Canada, namely the NSERC/iCORE/Xerox/Markin research chair program that aims to explore possibilities of adaptive mobile learning and to provide learners with a learning environment which facilitates personalized learning at any time and any place. One…

One goal of an undergraduate education in mathematics is to help students develop a productive disposition towards mathematics. A way of conceiving of this is as helping mathematical novices transition to more expert-like perceptions of mathematics. This conceptualization creates a need for a way to characterize students' perceptions of…

This study used a Chinese-language version of the Index of Science Reading Awareness to explore the science reading metacognition and comprehension of Taiwanese students. Structural equation modelling results confirmed the underlying model comprised three clusters of metacognitive knowledge: beliefs and confidence in science reading, knowledge of…

A new scale, the Student Perception of University Support and Structure Scale (SPUSS), was developed for research on the transition to university. The scale was based on concepts derived from Baumrind's (1971) theory of parenting styles. Data were obtained from two separate cohorts of freshmen (n=759 and 397) attending six Canadian universities of…

In Spring semester 2006, we conducted a study with 50 learners of German to investigate the use of a new measure (Cardenas-Claros, 2005) for research on the field independent/dependent (FID) cognitive style and CALL use. After the measure was administered, students worked on a CALL program for German that logs interaction. This paper reports the…

Data on perceptions of 1354 Canadian college and university students with disabilities about how well their information and communication technology (ICT) needs are being met on and off campus were collected. These formed the basis for the POSITIVES Scale (Postsecondary Information Technology Initiative Scale). The measure contains 26 items which…