Does attendance matter? This question has still not been answered conclusively. In general, studies find positive but mostly weak correlations between attendance and performance. However, due to technological changes in learning, attendance in higher education seems to lose its importance since students do not have to attend class to get access to…

Previous research shows that digital game-based learning (DGBL) can have positive effects on engagement, motivation and learning, and that using narratives may reinforce these effects. A systematic review identified 15 DGBL systems that report effects from their use of narratives. A gap in the field, however, is the lack of a common model to…

Anatomy and physiology courses are sometimes seen as difficult, which can lead to a lack of motivation in students to learn and engage in the course material. Students may also see the material as "dry," have issues forming personal connections, or struggle to connect the content to the real world. These issues may lead to students not…

Research indicates that engagement acts as an important precursor for learning, yet sustaining the engagement of pupils with special educational needs can be a challenge for classroom staff. An Active Support staff training package, Interactive Training, has been demonstrated as an effective way of increasing engagement in adults accessing…

The aim of this study is to adapt the Student Engagement Scale into Turkish higher education context. The scale has two previous versions whose aims are to determine the level of engagement of students studying at different universities (American-Canadian & Australian-New Zealand). Both scales provide significant benefits related to the…

This study examined the relationships between learning interest, flow, and creativity among high school students. As a state of interest, flow served as a mediating variable on the route from interest to creativity. The participants included high school students from a city in eastern China. The software of "Process" was adopted to…

Autonomy has been an important trait that marks the transition from childhood to adolescence. This study examines the effectiveness of the use of an autonomous learning component in outdoor programs, the final expedition, in enhancing youth autonomy in outdoor programs. This study used a mixed-method quantitative and qualitative research design to…

With roots in social psychology, second language (L2) motivation has largely been investigated using self-report techniques. Studies drawing on observational data gathered in contexts where learning takes place are rare, and understandings of how motivation evolves in classroom interactions remain limited (Boo, Dörnyei, & Ryan, 2015). In a…

Lectures can be enriched by engaging students with active learning components. Classroom response systems (CRSs), which run on the mobile electronic devices of students, make the "clicker" principle more accessible, facilitate active engagement of students in the lecture hall, and are well-suited to promote formative assessment. Opposite…

In recent years, growing interest has been seen in the application of gamification in education, which can be defined as the application of game design elements in learning activities. The goal of gamification is to motivate students by creating an engaging learning experience that can keep them focused on learning tasks in the classroom. However,…

In this article we report on pre-service teachers' mathematical engagement regarding the total surface areas of geometric solids. Despite several attempts at improvement, the poor performance of South African learners in mathematics persists. This is attributed to instructional approaches. In the study reported on here we explored how pre-service…

Gamification, the use of game design elements within nongame contexts, can be found across a wide range of digital products and is used to increase user engagement and simplify complex tasks for the user. While the use of gamification can be problematic with some content and contexts, these same strategies do have potential for engaging students…

Given prior work identifying sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization as key strategies needed to learn from multiple texts, this study examines students' multiple text processing and written response composition under three different heuristic conditions. In particular, students were asked to engage in sourcing, corroboration, or…

Enhancing student engagement plays a critical role in reducing student drop-out rate in online learning as students usually feel isolated and disconnected in this learning environment. This requires a clear conceptualization of the student engagement construct and its underlying structure. However, the conceptual understanding of the student…

Instructors of active-learning classes in economics face the challenges of motivating students to prepare before class and engaging fully in class activities. Team-based learning (TBL) pedagogy meets these challenges by (1) placing students in fixed, instructor-created teams that develop the ability to work productively together, (2) holding…