Graduate students’ self-reported perspectives regarding peer feedback and feedback from writing consultants

This study reported how ten Taiwanese Master’s students perceived their experiences of receiving feedback given by their peers and writing consultants to revise a shortened version of their thesis proposals. Collected over the course of one semester, data included students’ writing portfolios and interviews with them. Analysis of the data revealed three major themes: (1) The participants felt quite positive about providing and receiving peer feedback, although they seemed cautious toward language-related peer comments; (2) they generally had positive experience with the writing consultants, although the perceived usefulness of the consultants’ feedback varied with individual consultants and (3) the two types of comments served different functions for students, and questions arose from the peer editing process could serve as prompts for writing consultation sessions. Possible future research directions as well as pedagogical implication are outlined to conclude the paper.     

Investigating the quality of the school technology needs assessment (STNA) 3.0: A validity and reliability study

Schools and districts should use a well-designed needs assessment to inform important decisions about a range of technology program areas. Presently, there is a lack of valid and reliable instruments available and accessible to schools to effectively assess their educational needs to better design and evaluate their projects and initiatives. The School Technology Needs Assessment (STNA) is a free, user-friendly online survey tool that meets this need for planning and formative evaluation of technology projects in educational settings. This study used existing data from a robust sample (n = 1918) of educators from across North Carolina to examine the reliability and validity of STNA. A collective review of study results including the literature review, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and internal consistently reliability analysis indicated that STNA was a high-quality instrument.     

Effectiveness on Mental Health of Psychological Debriefing for Crisis Intervention in Schools

The purpose of this paper is to provide a summary of evidence for the effectiveness and safety of commonly used crisis interventions in schools, such as critical incident stress debriefing (CISD), critical incident stress management (CISM), and psychological debriefing (PD). Two researchers independently searched relevant databases for reviews and meta-analyses in English language peer-reviewed journals using identified keywords. The database search was supplemented by hand searches of the reference lists of database-identified reviews. Selected reviews were compared and analyzed for the effectiveness of CISD/CISM/PD interventions. Research findings suggest that these interventions are ineffective and may be harmful. Evidence of effectiveness of CISD/CISM/PD interventions in schools is very limited. Given evidence of ineffectiveness and potential harm of CISD/CISM/PD interventions in adults and limited evidence of these interventions in schools, there is no compelling reason to implement CISD/CISM/PD following crisis events in schools.     

Social Presence in Synchronous Virtual Learning Situations: The Role of Nonverbal Signals Displayed by Avatars

Social factors play an important role in determining whether instructional communication in computer-supported settings will be successful. Social presence is a social factor, specifically addressing the feeling of being present with another person in a virtual environment. This article describes possibilities to influence the feeling of social presence in synchronous learning scenarios using desktop collaborative virtual environments (CVEs). Desktop CVEs are technically simple compared with immersive CVEs and can be adapted according to the needs of the users. In this article, possible adaptations are described using the example of the desktop CVE virtual team room. In CVEs, users are represented as avatars. Avatars may or may not convey nonverbal signals. The focus of the article is on whether the actual use of nonverbal signals can affect the sense of social presence and thus help to establish and maintain the learner's motivation and provide support for structuring social interaction in learning situations. The paper provides a review of exploratory studies and experiments as well as a report on the author's own studies. Future research questions concerning learning in CVEs are discussed.     

Using Electroencephalography to Measure Cognitive Load

Application of physiological methods, in particular electroencephalography (EEG), offers new and promising approaches to educational psychology research. EEG is identified as a physiological index that can serve as an online, continuous measure of cognitive load detecting subtle fluctuations in instantaneous load, which can help explain effects of instructional interventions when measures of overall cognitive load fail to reflect such differences in cognitive processing. This paper presents a review of seminal literature on the use of continuous EEG to measure cognitive load and describes two case studies on learning from hypertext and multimedia that employed EEG methodology to collect and analyze cognitive load data.