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Full-Text Articles in Education

Cyber Professional Development In Inquiry Science: An Iterative Evaluation Strategy, Heather Leary, Tamara Sumner, Cathy Ringstaff, Danielle Brown, Holly Devaul Dec 2014

Cyber Professional Development In Inquiry Science: An Iterative Evaluation Strategy, Heather Leary, Tamara Sumner, Cathy Ringstaff, Danielle Brown, Holly Devaul

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

Traditional models of professional development (PD) for teachers are changing, and there is a move to use approaches that capitalize on technological tools to deliver PD online and blended. Offering PD using these technological approaches has the potential to save resources for districts. It is crucial to determine if these approaches are meeting the needs of teachers, especially when they are learning to implement new curricula. This study describes the process two partnering institutions used, working in parallel, to conduct fine- and coarse-grained formative evaluation of a CyberPD environment and course. Data collection included surveys, online focus groups, and interviews. …


More Than Just Plain Old Technology Adoption: Understanding Variations In Teachers' Use Of An Online Planning Tool, Heather Leary, Victor R. Lee, Mimi Recker Oct 2014

More Than Just Plain Old Technology Adoption: Understanding Variations In Teachers' Use Of An Online Planning Tool, Heather Leary, Victor R. Lee, Mimi Recker

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

This paper examines variability in teachers’ usage patterns as they interacted with an online teacher support tool, the Curriculum Customization Service (CCS), as part of their professional work. The CCS is a web application that supports teachers in planning, adapting, sequencing, and enacting differentiated instruction in Earth science education. By mining the usage log files of over 40 teachers who used the CCS over a yearlong period, we analyzed for variability using a framework developed in marketing research to characterize appropriation of technology. This analysis helped reveal different kinds of teachers’ patterns along two dimensions: frequency and variability of use. …


More Than Just Plain Old Technology Adoption: Understanding Variations In Teachers' Use Of An Online Planning Tool, Heather Leary, Victor R. Lee, Mimi Recker Oct 2014

More Than Just Plain Old Technology Adoption: Understanding Variations In Teachers' Use Of An Online Planning Tool, Heather Leary, Victor R. Lee, Mimi Recker

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

This paper examines variability in teachers’ usage patterns as they interacted with an online teacher support tool, the Curriculum Customization Service (CCS), as part of their professional work. The CCS is a web application that supports teachers in planning, adapting, sequencing, and enacting differentiated instruction in Earth science education. By mining the usage log files of over 40 teachers who used the CCS over a yearlong period, we analyzed for variability using a framework developed in marketing research to characterize appropriation of technology. This analysis helped reveal different kinds of teachers’ patterns along two dimensions: frequency and variability of use. …


Facilitating Teachers’ Thinking About Pedagogy And Technology With An Online Curriculum Planning Tool, Kirsten R. Butcher, Heather Leary, James Foster, Holly Devaul Dec 2013

Facilitating Teachers’ Thinking About Pedagogy And Technology With An Online Curriculum Planning Tool, Kirsten R. Butcher, Heather Leary, James Foster, Holly Devaul

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

The current study analyzed the impact of a year-long adoption of an online curriculum planning tool on teachers’ thinking about content and pedagogy, as well as their use of technology in the classroom. The online planning tool was adopted district-wide following professional development training with the purpose of supporting teachers’ development of differentiated, student-centered instruction with digital resources. Structured interviews with high school science teachers were used to determine how teachers’ thinking about key concepts and instruction changed during the course of technology adoption. Verbal protocol analysis was used to code interviews, using comprehension theory and national reform approaches in …


Self-Directed Learning In Problem-Based Learning: A Meta-Analysis, Heather Leary, Andrew Walker, Brett E. Shelton Mar 2012

Self-Directed Learning In Problem-Based Learning: A Meta-Analysis, Heather Leary, Andrew Walker, Brett E. Shelton

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

This paper presents a meta-analysis focused on self-directed learning in problem-based learning when compared with a traditional learning approach. A total of 75 outcomes from 38 studies were used in the analysis which resulted in a statistically significant overall medium effect size of g = 0.45, favoring problem-based learning. Subgroup analyses conducted focused on four aspects of self-directed learning. Both personal autonomy (g = 0.51, z(47) = 6.4, p = 0.01) and independent pursuit of learning (g = 0.66, z(2) = 3.49, p = 0.01) report statistically significant positive effect sizes. Three of eight disciplines reported statistically significant effect sizes …


Comparing Technology-Related Teacher Professional Development Designs: A Multilevel Study Of Teacher And Student Impacts, Andrew Walker, Mimi Recker, Lei Ye, Linda Sellers, Heather Leary, M. Brooke Robertshaw Mar 2012

Comparing Technology-Related Teacher Professional Development Designs: A Multilevel Study Of Teacher And Student Impacts, Andrew Walker, Mimi Recker, Lei Ye, Linda Sellers, Heather Leary, M. Brooke Robertshaw

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.


Integrating Technology And Problem-Based Learning: A Mixed Methods Study Of Two Teacher Professional Development Designs, Andrew Walker, Mimi Recker, M. Brooke Robertshaw, Jeffrey Osen, Heather Leary, Lei Ye, Linda Sellers Mar 2012

Integrating Technology And Problem-Based Learning: A Mixed Methods Study Of Two Teacher Professional Development Designs, Andrew Walker, Mimi Recker, M. Brooke Robertshaw, Jeffrey Osen, Heather Leary, Lei Ye, Linda Sellers

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

This article describes two consecutive enactments of technology-oriented teacher professional development designs, aimed at helping teachers find high-quality online learning resources and use them in designing effective problem-based learning (PBL) activities for their students. To align with current professional development prescriptions, in the first enactment, teachers learned PBL design skills concurrently with technology skills. Following aspects of design-based research, the professional development theory, participant feedback, and results from the first enactment informed the design of the second. In this second enactment, technology skills were separated and presented prior to learning about PBL. Results from a mixed-methods study of impact indicated …


School Librarians And Technology: Integrating Online Resources For Teaching, Linda Sellers, Heather Leary Oct 2011

School Librarians And Technology: Integrating Online Resources For Teaching, Linda Sellers, Heather Leary

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.


Teaching Use Of Digital Primary Sources For K-12 Settings, Anne R. Diekema, Heather Leary, Sheri Haderlie, Cheryl D. Walters Mar 2011

Teaching Use Of Digital Primary Sources For K-12 Settings, Anne R. Diekema, Heather Leary, Sheri Haderlie, Cheryl D. Walters

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

This paper describes learning outcomes of a three-day workshop on integrating primary sources into K-12 teaching. The short curriculum — intended for teams of teachers and school librarians — combined visits to a museum and a library's special collections with an introduction to significant national and local digital collections of primary sources. The paper draws on focus group data, reflection papers, and a conference presentation by the workshop participants as well as curricular artifacts presented to the workshop instructors. Using their workshop experience, teachers integrated digitized primary sources into their curricula thereby creating quality instructional content that engaged students' interest. …


Modeling Teacher Ratings Of Online Resources: A Human-Machine Approach To Quality, Mimi Recker, Heather Leary, Andrew Walker, Anne Diekema, Philipp Wetzler, Tamara Sumner, James Martin Feb 2011

Modeling Teacher Ratings Of Online Resources: A Human-Machine Approach To Quality, Mimi Recker, Heather Leary, Andrew Walker, Anne Diekema, Philipp Wetzler, Tamara Sumner, James Martin

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

In education, the scalable deployment of media-rich online resources supports peer production in ways that promise to radically transform teaching and learning (CRA, 2005; Pea et al., 2008). Online educational repositories such as the Digital Library for Earth Systems Education (DLESE.org) and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL.org) collect and curate online learning resources created for a wide range of educational audiences and subject areas (McArthur & Zia, 2008). Through a simple, web-based authoring tool, called the Instructional Architect (IA.usu.edu) teachers locate and share educational resources and activities in an IA project. These IA projects can then be viewed, copied, …


Developing And Using A Review Rubric To Assess Learning Resource Quality In Educational Digital Libraries, Heather Leary, Sarah Giersch, Andrew Walker, Mimi Recker Dec 2010

Developing And Using A Review Rubric To Assess Learning Resource Quality In Educational Digital Libraries, Heather Leary, Sarah Giersch, Andrew Walker, Mimi Recker

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.


A Problem Based Learning Meta Analysis: Differences Across Problem Types, Implementation Types, Disciplines, And Assessment Levels, Andrew Walker, Heather Leary Mar 2009

A Problem Based Learning Meta Analysis: Differences Across Problem Types, Implementation Types, Disciplines, And Assessment Levels, Andrew Walker, Heather Leary

Heather Leary, Ph.D.

Problem based learning (PBL) in its most current form originated in Medical Education but has since been used in a variety of disciplines (Savery & Duffy, 1995) at a variety of educational levels (Savery, 2006). Although recent meta analyses have been conducted (Dochy, Segers, Van den Bossche, & Gijbels, 2003; Gijbels, Dochy, Van den Bossche, & Segers, 2005) that attempted to go beyond medical education, they found only one study in economics and were unable to explain large portions of the variance across results. This work builds upon their efforts as a meta-analysis that crosses disciplines as well as categorizes …