Didactic and technical considerations when developing e-learning and CME

Several usability issues were encountered during the design of a blended e-learning program for a course in evidence-based medicine for general practice trainers. The program was developed in four steps. We focused in this article on step 2 and 3. Step 2 focused on which educational principles to apply, that is, which learning theories, instructional designs and other theories should influence the program. Step 3 focused on the design elements, namely whether to use hypermedia and/or multimedia, and what screen design and which font to use. This article presents the important issues in designing an e-course and provides an impression of the complexity of designing high quality e-learning in particular for continuing medical education (CME).     

Reconstruction of a Collaborative Mathematical Learning Process

The study focused on the interaction between two secondary school students while they were working on computerized mathematical investigation tasks related to probability theory. The aim was to establish how such interaction helped the students to learn from one another, and how it may have hindered their learning process. The assumption was that interaction is beneficial for students if they can perform certain key activities, namely showing, explaining, justifying, and reconstructing their work. Both students attained mathematical level raising. However, the student who explained frequently and criticized himself attained more mathematical level raising than the student who did not explain her work frequently or criticize herself.     

Vocabulary does not complicate the simple view of reading

Gough and Tunmer’s (1986) simple view of reading (SVR) proposed that reading comprehension (RC) is a function of language comprehension (LC) and word recognition/decoding. Braze et al. (2007) presented data suggesting an extension of the SVR in which knowledge of vocabulary (V) affected RC over and above the effects of LC. Tunmer and Chapman (2012) found a similar independent contribution of V to RC when the data were analyzed by hierarchical regression. However, additional analysis by factor analysis and structural equation modeling indicated that the effect of V on RC was, in fact, completely captured by LC itself and there was no need to posit a separate direct effect of V on RC. In the present study, we present new data from young adults with sub-optimal reading skill (N = 286). Latent variable and regression analyses support Gough and Tunmer’s original proposal and the conclusions of Tunmer and Chapman that V can be considered a component of LC and not an independent contributor to RC.     

Paving the Pathway: Exploring Student Perceptions of Professional Development Preparation in Doctoral Education

The breadth of doctoral education has expanded to include professional development activities in order to prepare students for academic and nonacademic careers. This mixed methods study focused on students’ perceptions of professional development opportunities at a Research One university. The findings suggest that most students feel prepared in scholarly-related activities; but they identify gaps in areas such as preparation for grant writing, teaching, and leading research teams. Statistically significant differences in perceived preparation were noted among disciplines. We offer suggestions for future research in doctoral professional development and recognize the need to expand and diversify centralized, institution-based resources so as to pave the pathway to successful careers for graduate students.     

A constructivist approach to numeration in primary school: Results of a three year intervention with the same group of children

This article is a follow-up to an earlier article (Bednarz and Janvier, 1982) which presented the results of a research study on the understanding of numeration by primary school children. That study pointed out the main difficulties children meet in learning numeration, presented a theoretical framework that made explicit a conception of numeration different from the one considered in current mathematics teaching, and also proposed a reference framework utilizable for learning and evaluating this notion. The experimentation in a classroom announced at the end of the article, was undertaken from 1980 to 1983 with the same group of children from the time they were in first grade (6–7 years old) to the third grade (8–9 years). The theoretical and reference frameworks developed in the former research study proved to be effective for developing a constructivist approach leading children to build a meaningful and efficient symbolism of number.This article is mainly devoted to presenting the results of this three year longitudinal study (part C). At first, we shall characterize briefly our intervention based on a constructivist approach of numeration (part A). Also we shall describe the conditions under which the experimentation was carried out, and the means used to evaluate the impact on the pupils (part B).     

Systematic comparison of solved problems as a cooperative learning task

Problem-solving skills and understanding of domain, knowledge (e.g., fighting misconceptions) are important goals in both secondary and tertiary science education. A prototype of an instructional task is presented which aims at improved problem-solving skills based on understanding of domain knowledge. In this task, comparing carefully selected solved problems by groups of students is utilised as a learning activity for the acquisition of adequate problem schemata. The task is designed as a part of the so-called UBP-program (UBP=Understanding Based Problem solving) currently being developed, for education in science. The result of an evaluative study for the field of mechanics is presented. The UBP-task appears apt to improve problem-solving skills at a less advanced level of physics education (e.g., 10th grade), especially for students normally performing poorly—who are often girls.     

Children's Estimations of the Sizes of the Continents

Curriculum changes in geography have focused increasing attention on children's knowledge and understanding of global spatial relationships. Map projections have become fashionable once more in geographical education, which also raises issues of the cartographic representation of the relative proportions of the land masses. In this study, 62 children were asked to estimate the sizes of the continents in relation to Europe, by selecting from a range of cut‐out continents of different sizes. The results indicate that the size of Asia was underestimated and the sizes of Australasia and Antarctica were overestimated. Possible reasons for this are discussed and some teaching approaches suggested.     

Evaluating the effects of faculty development: theoretical framework and empirical implementation

ABSTRACT

This article implements a systemic framework to evaluate the long-term effects of a program characterized by a SoTL approach and a hybrid learning environment. The importance of the difference between the perception of long-term effects on individual professional development on the one hand and the development of collective practices on the other, is interpreted with reference to certain shortcomings of the faculty development program’s learning design and its non-alignment with institutional practices. Based on this in-depth research, concrete ways to take account of the complexity of faculty development programs are proposed, both for research into and development of such programs and their impact at individual and institutional levels.