Instructional Strategies to Help Online Students Learn: Feedback from Online Students

Increased enrollment in online programs and courses has prompted a plethora of research on instructional strategies that impact online students’ learning. Most of these strategies came from instructors, and others were solicited from students. While the literature notes that students who have more university experience tend to provide more substantive responses when solicited, there seems to be limited representation of online master’s students’ preferences on what instructional strategies work for them. There is paucity in the literature on how these preferred instructional strategies inform existing theoretical and practical frameworks that could impact online learning performance. This article discusses the Top Ten Instructional Strategies preferred by master’s students who responded to a dissertation survey question - What specific things would you like your online instructors do to help you learn successfully? - and relates these strategies to the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education and the Quality Matters Rubric.     

STUDENTS' APPROACHES TO LEARNING AND SATISFACTION WITH PROBLEM‐BASED CURRICULA FOR FOUR DIFFERENT PROFESSIONS

This research looked at students' satisfaction with, and changes in approach to, learning during their first year in problem‐based curricula for agriculture, architecture, medicine and paramedicine. While students at each school showed little change in approach apart from achievement orientation in the six‐month period after entry to the course, there were different patterns of approach at each school. Satisfaction with their respective schools was uniformly high — notably in terms of their emotional climate, supportiveness, student and teacher interaction, and meaningful learning experiences. Correlations between students' approach to learning and degree of satisfaction with their course strongly support earlier claims and research findings on the merits of problem‐based curricula, although they still need more careful definition to be useful to curriculum planners.     

What the Marketplace Has Brought Us: Item-by-Item Teaching With Little Instructional Insight

School districts across the country have adopted interim and benchmark assessments in response to NCLB pressures to raise student achievement, despite the lack of a research base. Thus, it is especially important that well-conceived, empirical studies of the effects of such programs be carried out. Various theoretical frames can help understand how teams of teachers might begin to use data to reflect upon and adjust their instructional practices. At issue is whether an idealized data-based decision-making theory of action will play out in practice. Or, will teaching-the-test practices instead be exacerbated? What we learn from the empirical studies reviewed here is that positive examples, where assessment results were coherently linked to curriculum and instruction, were facilitated by highly committed principals and teacher leaders. But, these examples were rare. More frequently, interim assessments results appeared to be used, item by item, to reteach steps in problems that were missed without attending to underlying concepts or gaining diagnostic insights.     

Parental attitudes about teenage pregnancy: impact on sexual risk behaviour of African-American youth

African-American youth suffer disproportionately from sexual risk consequences including unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. Parents educating young people about sex may be one approach to reduce sexual risk behaviour among this population. The purpose of this study was to determine young people's perceptions of parents' attitudes about sex and assess whether these perceptions affect sexual risk. Data were collected from 560 African-Americans, aged 9–19 years. Most (73.4%) thought their parents would be unhappy if they got someone pregnant/got pregnant, with more girls feeling this way than boys (p = 0.013). Sexually active boys who thought their parents would be unhappy if they got someone pregnant reported fewer sexual partners within the past year (p < 0.01) and fewer sexual encounters in the past 3 months (p = 0.01) compared to those whose parents would think otherwise. Our research illustrates that parents' explicit and unstated attitudes are apparent to their offspring, and young people's perceptions can impact their risk behaviour. As such, early and often sex education communication between parents and young people should be encouraged. Sexual health interventions encouraging parents to educate about sex and its consequences could enhance the health of young African-Americans.     

Temporal trends in the sit-ups performance of 9,939,289 children and adolescents between 1964 and 2017

ABSTRACT

We estimated international/national temporal trends in sit-ups performance for children and adolescents, and examined relationships between national trends in sit-ups performance and national trends in health-related/sociodemographic indicators. Data were obtained by systematically searching studies reporting on temporal trends in sit-ups performance for apparently healthy 9–17 year-olds, and by examining nationally representative fitness datasets. Trends at the country-sex-age level were estimated by sample-weighted regression models relating the testing year to mean sit-ups performance. International/national trends were estimated by a post-stratified population-weighting procedure. Pearson’s correlations quantified relationships between national trends in sit-ups performance and national trends in health-related/sociodemographic indicators. A total of 9,939,289 children and adolescents from 31 countries/special administrative regions between 1964 and 2017 collectively showed a large improvement of 38.4% (95% CI: 36.8 to 40.0) or 7.1% per decade (95% CI: 6.8 to 7.4). Large international improvements were experienced by all age and sex groups, with the rate of improvement slowing from 1964 to 2000, stabilizing near zero until 2010, before declining. Trends differed between countries, with national trends in vigorous physical activity a strong, positive correlate of national trends in sit-ups performance. More sit-ups data are needed from low- and middle-income countries to better monitor trends in muscular fitness.     

Inflated Test Score Gains: Is the Problem Old Norms or Teaching the Test?

What explanations have been provided for spurious test score gains? Are states and districts narrowing the curriculum and teaching the test? What effect does teaching the test have on the norms themselves? What alternatives must be sought to protect the integrity of instruction and the validity of scores?     

Re-thinking Intelligence: schools that build the mind

We now understand that human intelligence, once thought to be determined almost solely by heredity, is malleable. In developed countries, average intelligence test scores have increased substantially since the tests began to be administered 100 years ago. In school settings, however, intelligence is often still treated as a fixed attribute that limits many students' ability to learn. We argue that schools can and should create intelligence. A body of research has now shown that participating in certain forms of discussion-based instruction can lead to gains in performance, not only in the subject taught, but also in other, distant domains. This means that schools can actually ‘grow the mind.’ Here, we look at a few powerful examples of dialogic teaching and learning, and discuss some of the implications for the future of education.