This 2015 Brown Center Report (BCR) represents the fourteenth edition of the series since the first issue was published in 2000. It includes three studies. Like all previous BCRs, the studies explore independent topics but share two characteristics: they are empirical and based on the best evidence available. The studies in this edition are on the…

It is important to reveal strategies which foster students' reading motivation in order to break through the declining trend in reading motivation throughout children's educational careers. Consequently, the present study advances an underexposed field in reading motivation research by studying and identifying the strategies of teachers excellent…

The Internet Generation today is accustomed to multi-tasking, graphics, fun, and fantasy. Educators are finding it challenging to engage and motivate students with the traditional mode of teaching. They are increasingly seeking to tap the potential of game-based learning to engage and motivate learners. Game-based learning is also catching on in…

This article describes research results based on multiple years of experimentation and real-world experience with an adaptive tutoring system named Wayang Outpost. The system represents a novel adaptive learning technology that has shown successful outcomes with thousands of students, and provided teachers with valuable information about students'…

Since online educational technology can support a ubiquitous language learning environment, there are many ways to develop English learners' autonomy through self-access learning. This study investigates whether English as a second language (ESL) learners can improve their oral proficiency through independent study by using online self-study…

This qualitative case study was designed to explore students' perceptions of online learning at a small rural community college to understand what factors impacted their persistence in coursework. The research problem dealt with retention rates in online courses, which were lower than in face-to-face courses. Despite extensive quantitative…

Unilateral enterprise resource planning (ERP) curriculum improvements from the instructor's perspective are likely to generate only limited success. Understanding student motivations and beliefs with ERP systems is the missing link to effective ERP education. Relatively little attention in the ERP literature has been given to student learning…

Background: Common conceptions of motivation and self-regulation view them as related but distinct entities. Most research on motivation and self-regulation investigates quantitative relations between level (e.g., self-efficacy) or type of motivation (e.g., mastery goals) and level of self-regulation. Purpose: Alternatively, the current study…

We evaluated the effects of presession satiation on challenging behavior and academic engagement during subsequent classroom activities for three 5-6 year-old children with autism. The percentage of 10-s intervals with challenging behavior and academic engagement during 20-min classroom activity sessions was observed under two conditions. One…

Master teacher Lisa Morris invites you to share her secrets of success with writer's workshops. After years of experimenting with the workshop model, she has developed the most effective ways to apply it in the classroom, yielding higher test scores and increased student engagement. Through practical, step-by-step instruction, Morris demonstrates…

This is the last in a series of six papers by the Center on Education Policy exploring issues related to students' motivation to learn. This paper explores ways in which schools, teachers, and communities are using nontraditional methods to try to motivate students who don't respond to more traditional strategies. The paper focuses on three such…

The authors describe the steps they took to ramp up their efforts to reach out to students by retooling their teaching. Four factors became essential: the use of writing as a tool for engagement and learning, the necessity to prepare students to compete in an increasingly digitized world, the motivational appeal of the graphic novel genre, and the…

This paper is a report on the findings of a qualitative PhD pilot research study on the integration of Serious Games specifically Mingoville to motivate the Chinese primary students in an EFL classrooms. It was carried out in two primary schools: the students are both from low and high income families respectively in Jiangsu Province, PR, China.…

Design and technology education provides children with opportunities to create solutions to specific needs in innovative ways. This paper reports on research that focused on the language that the children used when they were involved in a design and technology activity. In accessing the results of the language study, the findings suggest that the…

During the past two decades, the popularity of computer and video games has prompted games to be a source of study for educational applications (Dickey, 2007). The most distinguishing characteristic of games is their capability to engage and motivate their players (Kiili, 2005). Educators started to explore game-based learning by testing…