All college students face new challenges and transitions, but for first-generation adult community college students, those challenges are more pervasive than those of their second-generation peers. The problem addressed is that first-generation adult community college students are at greater risk than their second-generation peers of dropping out…

The goals of higher education often entail the development of students' character. Rarely, however, are these character development goals connected to the unique design and delivery of distance education programs. Additionally, the research literature that explores the character development aspects of distance education is sparse. Thus the purpose…

Because service-learning challenges participants to widen perspectives on social issues, we designed and assessed a multi-semester, multidisciplinary project with both academic and service objectives. In this project, undergraduate students developed a script and video centered on a board game designed to educate high-school students about their…

Schools generally have been unable to keep up with the rapid technical changes in modern society. As a result, primary school age children worldwide are becoming self-taught independent e-learners and the gap between what they know and are able to do exceeds the learning outcomes for their schools' ICT (information communication technology)…

Research indicates that online learning often situates control of implementation with the learner. Recently, scholars have turned attention to the importance of self-directed learning (SDL) skills for online learning environments. Existing frameworks for understanding SDL focus primarily on process and personal attributes in face-to-face settings.…

Accessibly written and easy to use, "Applied Statistics Using SPSS" is an all-in-one self-study guide to SPSS and do-it-yourself guide to statistics. What is unique about Eelko Huizingh's approach is that this book is based around the needs of undergraduate students embarking on their own research project, and its self-help style is designed to…

The home-school movement, a once-marginalized segment of the educational community, is all grown up and going off to college. As colleges across the nation report increasing numbers of applications from home-schooled students, policies have been developed to evaluate these candidates. Translating years of independent study into something that…

In this exercise the US Standard Atmosphere is used as "data" that a student is asked to model by deriving equations to reproduce it with the help of spreadsheet and graphing software. The exercise can be used as a laboratory or an independent study for a student of introductory physics to provide an introduction to scientific research…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how Malaysian managers acquire job competencies through self-directed learning activities at their workplace. Specifically it aims to investigate what types of job competencies are required for the managers, how they learn to acquire those competencies, and whether the managers have the…

The authors designed a computer-based approach to enhance motivation and self-regulated learning. Participants of the quasi-experimental study were 6th-grade students (N = 151) who worked with a mathematics-learning software program during regular classroom instruction. In the 1st condition, students received attributional software-generated…

The online educational environment is increasingly being used by adults and should be designed based on the needs of adult learners. This article discusses andragogy, an important adult learning theory, and reviews three other adult learning theories: self-directed learning, experiential learning, and transformational learning. During this…

This paper connects an online learning model to the rights to education that the online educational environments can provide. The model emerges from a study of ninety-two online learners and is composed of three kinds of inquiries, namely, independent inquiry, collaborative inquiry, and formative inquiry towards expert knowledge. Online learners…

Background: The predominant dissertation model used in teacher education courses in Flanders is the "literature study with practical processing". Despite the practical supplement, this traditional model does not fit sufficiently well with autonomous learning as the objective of modern teacher education dissertations. This study reports on the…

This article addresses two important questions about the transition to independent research: (1) What facilitates or impedes graduate students' ability to make the transition, where "impede" is defined as leaving the program without completing the dissertation, making slow progress toward the degree, or completing an undistinguished dissertation…