Despite many calls for undergraduate biology instructors to incorporate active learning into lecture courses, few studies have focused on what it takes for instructors to make this change. We sought to investigate the process of adopting and sustaining active-learning instruction. As a framework for our research, we used the innovation-decision model, a generalized model of how individuals adop...

Recent interest in online course design has prompted concern in issues relating to assessment of student contributions in computer-mediated communication (CMC) environments. A current focus of discussion in CMC research is to look into how instructors could move away from looking at the quantity (i.e., the number of postings) to assessing the quality (i.e., the usefulness and meaningfulness of ...

With a growing number of courses offered online and degrees offered through the Internet, there is a considerable interest in online education, particularly as it relates to the quality of online instruction. The major concerns are centering on the following questions: What will be the new role for instructors in online education? How will students' learning outcomes be assured and improved in ...

Communication between students and their instructors in the lab is a limited commodity. With limited access to the tutor, students can sometimes spend a long time trying to fix simple errors, continually revisiting and repeating the same errors. Instructors, on the other hand, find themselves explaining the same mistakes over and over again. It is often not clear to them how well individual stu...

In order to include more writing assignments in large classrooms, some instructors have been utilizing peer review. However, many instructors are hesitant to use peer review because they are uncertain of whether students are capable of providing reliable and valid ratings and comments. Previous research has shown that students are in fact capable of rating their peers papers reliably and with t...

Chair based exercise (CBE) can be used to engage older adults unable to take part in standing exercise programmes. Defining and understanding the context of CBE have been acknowledged as a challenge. We explore instructor experiences of delivering mostly seated exercise classes for older people and how this helps us to further understand the concept of CBE. We extracted qualitative data from a ...

Despite the rapid use of e-Learning in higher education, the beliefs of instructors about and their practices during online instruction have been seldom addressed. This study explores the role perceptions of e-instructors in higher education. In total, 106 instructors from 20 Taiwanese universities filled out a questionnaire. Analytical results indicate that “content expertise” and “instruction...

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses are currently well-established university programs. These courses are run independently by English Language Teaching (ELT) instructors and content instructors without any collaboration. However, ELT instructors and content instructors do not receive the same level of collegiality and social support from the organizations and students. This paper probe...