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The current study was conducted to investigate whether test scores of Iranian English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners were equivalent across CBT and PBT modes, with 58 intermediate learners studying at a private language academy located in Behshahr city in northern Iran. Moreover, test takers' computer familiarity, attitudes, aversion, and testing mode preference were regarded as the potential issues to influence CBT test scores. Data were collected using CBT and PBT versions of Nelson Proficiency Multiple-Choice Tests and Computer Aversion, Attitudes, and Familiarity Index (CAAFI) questionnaire as well as a simple testing administration mode preference question. The participants produced similar scores across modes, although they insignificantly outperformed on the CBT version. Additionally, analysis of the overall scores on the CAAFI and mode preference question obtained from CBT testing session indicated no statistically significant correlation between computer familiarity, attitude, aversion, and mode preference variables and test takers' CBT scores. The qualitative findings of this study obtained by semi-structured interview revealed that most of the participants showed high preference and more advantages for CBT over PBT to rationalize why they preferred this mode of testing.

ePortfolios play an important role in tertiary education globally in the 21st Century. Several studies have advocated for the implementation of ePortfolios on the basis that they have the potential to integrate technology whilst making learning visible and meaningful for students. However, rarely is the implementation of ePortfolios, considered from the students' perspective. The development of web-based learning resources including ePortfolios platforms are often driven by software developers with an extensive degree of technical expertise, rather than teachers and educators and, without acknowledging potential difficulties this may create for students (Andrews & Cole, 2015; Beckers, Dolmons, & Merriënboer, 2016; Cordier et al. (2016); Leacock & Nesbit, 2007; Nam & Smith-Jackson, 2007). The aim of this study was to explore students' perspectives on the value of an ePortfolio platform in the final year for nursing students in the Bachelor of Nursing programme in a New Zealand tertiary institute. The data for this study were obtained through focus group sessions. Thematic analysis identified four themes from the data which were the importance of ease of use, feedback, transparency, and the role of supporting technology. This study aligns with previous literature in demonstrating students' preference for the use of ePortfolios but extends our knowledge by considering the value of ePortfolios from students' perspectives.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the meanings assigned by pre-service teachers to the wastepaper basket and waste (crumpled) papers in their drawings of a scientist. The study was carried out with 220 pre-service teachers during the 2015-2016 academic years. A phenomenological research method was used. First, the pre-service teachers were administered the 'Draw-A-Scientist Test' in order to identify their images of a scientist and then they were asked to describe and explain the scientist they drew. And a semi-structured interview was performed with the 34 pre-service teachers who included a wastepaper basket and waste paper in their drawings in order to identify the meanings assigned to the wastepaper and wastepaper basket by these teachers. The data were analysed by using content analysis. The results of the analysis showed that with these figures the pre-service teachers revealed their belief that when scientists conduct research, they follow a confirmatory experimental process in a similar manner to the way school science experiments. Based on these results, it can be suggested in the analysis of the drawings that waste paper and wastepaper baskets can be regarded as indicators of the stereotypical image of scientists and of the scientific method they use.

Source-based writing research has received much attention in recent years, which generally shows that both novice and expert EFL (English as a foreign language) writers have difficulties in writing from sources. As many Chinese institutes of higher education attach increasingly more importance to publications in international journals, citation and plagiarism become critical issues for both student and teacher researchers as well as the institutes. Nevertheless, not much research can be found on the issues with Chinese students, especially undergraduate students. The present study thus investigated Chinese undergraduate EFL learners' perceptions of plagiarism and use of citations in their course papers. A total of 141 students from a highly prestigious university answered an open-ended questionnaire and 97 of them submitted course papers. Major findings were: (1) the students had a (fairly) good knowledge of plagiarism and identified various reasons for plagiarism in academic writing, (2) they used summary the most often when citing from sources, followed by paraphrase and quotation, and (3) they mainly used single-source citations to primarily support their own ideas, position an author's opinions and/or findings, and acknowledge the author's ideas. These findings reveal a general overview of students' perceptions of plagiarism and use of citations in their course papers, thus providing implications for formal classroom instruction of writing from sources.

This study examined the extent, motives and impact of mobile phone photo note-taking on students' learning at Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE) in Tanzania. It employed the mixed methods approach. A sample of 310 respondents was drawn using a multi stage sampling technique which involved stratified random sampling at the first stage and convenient sampling at the second stage. Questionnaires and interviews were used to obtain data for the study. The findings revealed that mobile photo note-taking was a common practice at DUCE. The time consuming nature of handwritten notes, Speedy lecturing, easy access to notes, peer and technological influence were claimed to be the motives behind students' fondness to the practice. It was also revealed that the distraction of concentration, impairment of handwriting skills and speed, poor attendance to the lecture sessions, and distortion of students' ability to compose and organize their own work were the impact of the practice. The study recommends that the University should create better teaching and learning environment to allow university students to use variables and multiple note-taking methods for best results underlying each method.

This paper describes how an anatomy and physiology laboratory class transitioned from a paper-based lab to an online learning platform that updated the curriculum to rely more on face-to-face small group collaboration and peer teaching. Student perceptions of the new format were positive, but halfway through the transition a global pandemic challenged the new instruction method. The face-to-face curriculum had to be adjusted to a virtual format that lacked in-person interaction between the instructor and the students. This switch to virtual labs had an adverse effect on both student perception and student performance in the second half of the semester. Our observations underscore the importance of creating an interactive community when teaching virtually.

Several researchers have compared the efficacy of digital flashcards (DFs) versus paper flashcards (PFs) to improve L2 vocabulary and have concluded that using DFs is more effective (Azabdaftari & Mozaheb, 2012; Basoglu & Akdemir, 2010; Kiliçkaya & Krajka, 2010). However, these studies did not utilize vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) as a way to support the vocabulary development of those using PFs. This is significant because DFs often offer a range of features to promote vocabulary development, whereas PFs are much more basic; thus, learners who study via paper materials are at a disadvantage compared with those who use DFs. Given the success that VLSs have had in fostering L2 vocabulary enhancement (e.g., Mizumoto & Takeuchi, 2009), their incorporation could have influenced the previous studies. Therefore, one of the primary aims of this study was to find if there were significant differences in receptive and productive L2 vocabulary improvements between students who used PFs in conjunction with 3 VLSs -- dropping, association, and oral rehearsal -- and those who used the DF tools Quizlet and Cram. Additionally, the researchers examined the learners' opinions to see if there was a preference for either study method. A total of 52 EFL students at two Japanese universities participated in the 12-week study. Pre- and post-tests were administered to measure the vocabulary gains in the PF group (n = 26) and the DF group (n = 26). Results from a paired t-test revealed that both groups made significant improvements in receptive and productive vocabulary. However, the difference between the gains was not significant, which contrasts with past comparison studies of DFs and PFs and highlights the importance of VLSs. A 10-item survey with closed and Likert-scale questions was also administered to determine the participants' opinions towards the study methods. Higher levels of agreement were found in the experimental group, indicating that the students viewed DFs more favorably than PFs.

The present review attempted to address the direction of plagiarism literature in Turkish context. 15 studies conducted in Turkey on plagiarism were analyzed through content analysis. The context, purposes, methodological issues and results of researching plagiarism were categorized. The findings of this review indicated that although plagiarism's raising legal and ethical concerns is acknowledged by Turkish researchers, there are limited numbers of studies exploring the plagiarism perceptions, views, situations and reasons of Turkish graduate students and professors.

Computer-based testing (CBT), which refers to delivering assessments with computers, has been widely used in large English proficiency tests worldwide. Despite an increasing CBT in China, limited research is available concerning whether CBT can be used for the Test for English Majors-Band 4 (TEM 4). The current study investigated whether testing mode impacted TEM 4 score and factors (i.e., computer familiarity level and attitude towards CBT) that might correlate with performance on CBT of TEM 4. Overall 92 Chinese undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of the groups, i.e., CBT or paper-based testing (PBT), and took the test. A mixed method was employed, including (1) quantitative and qualitative analysis of test performance in two modes, as well as CBT group participants' computer familiarity and attitudes towards the mode; and (2) thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews. The results revealed that (1) test scores in CBT and PBT were comparable; (2) two items in the computer familiarity questionnaire, i.e., comfort level of reading articles on the computer and forgetting time when using computers, positively correlated with CBT scores; and (3) participants' attitude towards CBT did not impact test performance.

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) introduce research leading to skills acquisition and increased persistence in the major. CUREs generate enthusiasm and interest in doing science and serve as an intervention to increase equity and participation of historically marginalized students. In the second-semester laboratory of our introductory sequence for biology and marine science majors at California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB), instructors updated and implemented a field-based CURE. The goals of the CURE were to promote increased scientific identity, systems thinking, and equity at a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI). Through the CURE, students engaged in scientific writing through a research paper with a focus on information literacy, critical thinking, and quantitative reasoning as important elements of thinking like a scientist. Course exams also revealed that students showed gains in their ability to evaluate a new biological system using systems thinking. More broadly, because such field-based experiences demonstrate equity gains among Latinx students and a much greater sense of scientific identity, they may have impacts beyond introductory biology including in students' personal and professional lives.

Virtual reality software has evolved to create ever more realistic virtual environments. Sophisticated virtual education laboratory experiments are now possible. Some educators and researchers question the value of hands-on laboratories relative to virtual laboratories. Researchers have investigated students' acceptance of virtual laboratories and the relative effectiveness of virtual laboratories compared to traditional hands-on laboratories. Research results indicated that students' attitudes toward virtual laboratory experiments are positive, and researchers found virtual laboratory experiments to be as effective as or more effective than traditional hands-on laboratories. However, researchers have not measured simulated laboratory effectiveness for all standard education laboratory goals. Simulated laboratory technology will be part of science education, but how to introduce laboratory simulations and the appropriate role for simulated laboratories remains a subject of debate. Are virtual laboratory experiments acceptable substitutes for hands-on laboratories in secondary education? To explore this question, laboratory goals and effectiveness criteria must be defined and measured for secondary education. This paper explores the goals and effectiveness of virtual and hands-on education laboratories. This paper also outlines the arguments for and against the replacement of traditional hands-on labs with simulated laboratories in secondary science education and makes a case for using laboratory simulations to supplement rather than replace traditional hands-on laboratories.

Many students do not engage with reading the scientific literature, which is a core skill in undergraduate students. The learning environment has an important impact upon learning. It was postulated that taking reading out of the formal learning environment might impact upon students' willingness to engage with the literature, and confidence in doing so. A staff-student research partnership initiative funded by Kingston University allowed this hypothesis to be tested. Three Tea Club sessions, informal drop-in reading sessions were offered in a student-owned space within the Students' Union. Refreshments were supplied, aiming for a 'coffee house' feel. Although the numbers of students who engaged with the Tea Club were small, evaluations were positive. In particular students valued the opportunity for peer learning. However the chosen environment was too noisy. Future sessions will be offered within a different, less noisy environment with facilities for refreshments, and will be offered throughout the academic year to facilitate student engagement.

Assessments are usually thought of as ways for instructors to get information from students. In this work, we flip this perspective and explore how assessments communicate information to students. Specifically, we consider how assessments may provide information about what faculty and/or researchers think it means to know and do physics, i.e., their epistemologies. Using data from students completing assessment questions during one-on-one think aloud interviews, we explore how assessment features did (or did not) impact student engagement with the assessment problems. We analyze video recordings and transcripts to infer the epistemological framings and resources students use while completing introductory-level physics problems. Students' framings tended to be fairly stable, but when shifts occurred, they were triggered by a shift in epistemological resource, which can be activated by assessment feature. This work extends existing work on epistemological framing into the realm of assessment and allows us to consider the effects of assessments on our students' understanding of physics teaching and learning.

The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of the use of paper-based and weblog-based electronic portfolios on the writing achievement of limited English proficiency students, to survey the students' attitudes towards the use of the portfolio assessment, and to compare the viewpoints of the students in the control and experimental groups. The study was conducted with 60 second-year hotel and tourism students enrolled in the Writing for the Service Industry course. They had limited English proficiency, as their previous English grades were C or below in average. The simple random sampling technique was used for subject selection and group assignment. Google's free weblog website (located at www.blogger.com) was used as a tool for creating and developing the students' personal electronic portfolios. At the beginning of the course, the students in the control group and the experimental group were trained in the concept of portfolios, and the purposes, content, and criteria used for assessment were discussed with the students. A writing achievement test and a closed-ended questionnaire were used for the quantitative data collection, while the qualitative data were gathered from the open-ended questions, interviews, and reflection. Descriptive statistics and t-tests were employed for the data analysis. It was found that the effects of the use of paper-based portfolios and weblog-based electronic portfolios on the writing achievement were not significantly different, but some promising results of the use of weblog-based electronic portfolios for language learning and assessment are indisputable.

University education has been massified in South Africa and this has disrupted conventions and practices of assessment. Universities are perceived as promoting complex achievements and complex skills through rigorous curriculum specifications and assessment instruments. Due to experiences in high school and the novelty of university education, students have begun to enquire about the "scope of the paper." This enquiry has tended to destabilise the reliability of assessments and judgments in universities in South Africa. Grades and symbols certified by some universities have become both indeterminate and ambiguous. A qualitative, quantitative design was adopted to identify and interrogate university research participants' views on experiences about examinations at university level. In the process, the meanings that first-year degree-level test-takers ascribed to the concept of "the scope of the paper" were unpacked. It was determined which aspects of the test scope students had studied in order to prepare for tests. Inferences were made about the concepts that the students marginalised because they were perceived to be "out of the scope" of the examination. A holistic and broad educational experience for university students is recommended in spite of the daunting numbers enrolled in certain university courses.

What are the typical printing behaviors of students? What is the extent of wastage? What are student attitudes towards different pay-per-print schemes? What might be strategies for educational institutions to achieve less printing while not impeding pedagogical quality?

Test providers are increasingly moving toward exclusively administering assessments by computer. Computerized testing is becoming more desirable for test takers because of increased opportunities to test, faster turnaround of individual scores, or perhaps other factors, offering potential benefits for those who may be struggling to pass licensure examinations. This report extends previous research examining 4 years of paper-based "Praxis I"® test data to its corresponding computerized environment with these goals: (a) determine the extent to which achievement gaps exist on computer-based (CB) Praxis I tests, (b) examine which test-taker characteristics are most associated with mode, and (c) elicit opinions from previous Praxis I test takers to understand reasons why a particular testing mode was chosen. The results contribute to the literature about "Praxis"® examinations and reinforce the need to understand their dynamics in the context of evaluating performance and participation gaps by demographic characteristics.

It is essential to establish a multi-dimensional postgraduate quality evaluation system for student assessment and training. This study aimed to explore the construction of the multiindex and hierarchical comprehensive evaluation system for postgraduate training in science and engineering based on the Context, Input, Process, Product (CIPP) model using Analytic Hierarchy Process. It involved 756 postgraduates in physics and engineering who were randomly selected via the Internet. Data were collected from the questionnaire about postgraduates' basic information. After collection, Factor Analysis was used to verify the rationality of the design of second-level and third-level indicators, and adjust the corresponding weights. On this basis, Cluster Analysis was used to classify the training quality of the postgraduates based on their scores on academic ability, basic quality, and social ability indicators. The results revealed that the index system includes 4 first-level indicators,12 second-level indicators and 36 third-level indicators, and different weights being assigned to the indicators according to their influence on the training quality of postgraduates in science and engineering. This study also provides some reference for the quality of science and engineering postgraduate training in Chinese universities by proposing relevant measures, which could be interesting also for international audience.

Public schools widely use mission statements, and many educational administration programs teach mission statements as a necessary lever for school improvement. A mixed methods investigation examined three levels. An experiential phenomenological analysis examined graduate students' experiences with mission statements within their own schools and professional life. A thematic analysis examined 80 schools in the Midwestern United States, broken down by high and low performance on state academic testing, ecological differences, quantitative structures of the mission statement, and qualitative themes and dimensions. A meta-synthesis compared findings with previous research. There were structural differences in mission statements, but the conclusion was mission statements were a legacy practice which served the political spectacle, and practitioners adopted the practice out of conformity. There was no direct evidence mission statements achieved the stated purpose. Recommendations were made to refashion mission statements and the school improvement process around four factors.

Online software systems are extensively used to give students practice on course content, especially in mathematics and physics courses. They offer instant feedback, and several of these systems are open source or very economical compared with hiring graders for traditional paper-and-pencil-based homework (PPH). In this article, the authors evaluate WeBWorK (WW), an online software tool, in an introductory course on probability over two semesters. WW is compared with PPH by measuring student perception, average time spent on a problem, collaborative work outside of classroom, resilience, self-efficacy, and exam performance. The authors find that except for working in groups on homework, students perform similarly on all the aforementioned aspects in both PPH and WW. The authors also suggest potential strategies to improve student understanding and learning while using WW and recommend the use of WW in mathematics-oriented courses.

This qualitative study investigated how pre-service teachers of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) experienced and learned from their completion of a reflective project, including a reflection paper and digital storytelling. The participants were 20 graduate students in a program for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at a university in the United States. This study aimed to identify participants' experiences when completing the project and its influences on their learning. The findings demonstrated their diverse performance and perspectives during the tasks, as well as their learning in language, culture, education, and technology. Based on these findings, dialogic hybrid learning and the pedagogical implications are discussed.

This study was conducted to identify and analyze some significant features that influence students and teachers about computer-based tests (CBT) and paper-and-pencil tests (P&P) at the context of the PAULEX Project. In order to do that, a large experiment has been developed at the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Polytechnic University of Valencia), Spain, in which several students and professors have answered a validated questionnaire about their usage of technology, feelings and experiences. They also compared their preferences after doing two similar basic tests, CBT and P&P.

The purpose of the study was to explore how technological advances incorporated into the Philology Studies curriculum could impact the students' research skills and the quality of their research projects and what students' and teachers' impressions of the reshaped research component of the curriculum were. The study used qualitative and quantitative methods with the dominance of qualitative methods. It employed the baseline study, checklist to assess students' research papers, assessment criteria, and the Triangular Assessment Method to assess the students' papers. The consensus meeting was held to allow the experts to express their reasoning for the scores. The semi-structured interview was administered to the students' and teachers' to identify their impressions of the reshaped research component of the curriculum of philology. The technological advances incorporated into Philology Studies curriculum improve the students' research skills and the quality of their research projects. Both students and teachers appreciated the reshaped research component of the curriculum. The analytical software can be successfully incorporated in the corpus analysis-purpose student research. The students found the intervention a challenging experience that 'pumped up' their intellectual, research, and technical skills. They reported improvement in interpreting corpus using correlations, frequencies, distributions, and collecting information using software to organise it in a professional way. The lecturers agreed that the technology-based instructional model incorporated into Philology Studies curriculum improved both students' research skills and the quality of their research projects.

The present study is an attempt to discover whether Iraqi EFL College Students are aware of research plagiarism or they are not. To manage this study the researchers set three questions, aims, and hypotheses. Thus they prepare a questionnaire (of five domains and 25 items) to be conducted on 116 male and female fourth year students from department of English/College of Education/University of Kerbala. The results show that they are unaware of plagiarism because they are not acquainted with the right way of avoiding plagiarism. A t-test has been use to show whether there are differences between males and females, and the result shows no statistical difference. Moreover, a set of conclusions such as students are not acquainted with the right way of documentation because the textbook is relatively old, they don't have enough practical training in writing research paper. Finally, recommendations have been presented such as: The instructors (whether professors or teachers) should focus on the ethical considerations in writing papers, the textbook should be updated occasionally to match the need of the new academic publishing requirements.