This paper aims to explore the benefits of Blended Learning towards students' learning experiences at an offshore campus of an Australian university located in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. At the university campus, the Blended Learning practice in use is the displacement of content. Content displacement refers to a portion of the learning content and activities for a course being delivered online via the Learning Management System. Learning not only happens in face-to-face sessions at a given time but is extended to online spaces as well, happening anywhere at any time at students' preference. The focus of this research is its usefulness and effectiveness in promoting interactions between students and their peers, their teachers, and course materials. An online survey, which was designed based on a set of validated questions, was used to collect data from sixty-six students enrolled in eight Blended Learning courses. The analysis of the survey results provides empirical evidence to the claim that students' perception of their learning experiences at the university was beneficially impacted as a result of the Blended Learning environment in each of their classes. Specifically, factor analysis using oblique rotation method identifies a clear factor structure across survey questions, representing four dimensions of benefits: Engagement, Flexibility of learning, Online learning experience, and Self-confidence. In addition, significant differences between the clusters on these factors indicate that students vary in their responses towards the benefits of Blended Learning and their experience with a Blended Learning approach.

ABSTRACT:The work presented builds on a multiyear effort to study the implementation and adaptation of Kids as Global Scientists (KGS), an inquiry-based, technology-rich middle school learning environment enacted simultaneously in hundreds of classrooms across the nation. Two groups of teachers participated in this study. One group consists of "maverick" teachers: those distributed across the nation that find us and customize our program to their needs without systematic professional development. This group of teachers tends to work in schools with a relatively rich fund of resources and supports. Another group-urban teachers-resulted from a recent partnership between KGS and teachers from a large, high-poverty urban school district. We provide these teachers with targeted professional development to help them overcome constraints common to their schools. This study provides profiles of both maverick and urban teachers, and then examines teacher and student data from five focus classrooms that were successful in implementing KGS. In all cases, successful classrooms were defined as those where students made significant positive gains on open-ended and multiple-choice assessments. The focus classrooms consisted of three classrooms from urban teachers in high-poverty environments and two classrooms from maverick teachers in middle-class suburban environments. The paper discusses the need for research that provides multiple exemplars of classroom science inquiry that are realized through large-scale enactments responsive to diverse learning environments.

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This study describes the process of defining a hypothetical learning progression (LP) for astronomy around the big idea of Solar System formation. At the most sophisticated level, students can explain how the formation process led to the current Solar System by considering how the planets formed from the collapse of a rotating cloud of gas and dust. Development of this LP was conducted in 2 phases. First, we interviewed middle school, high school, and college students (N = 44), asking them to describe properties of the current Solar System and to explain how the Solar System was formed. Second, we interviewed 6th-grade students (N = 24) before and after a 15-week astronomy curriculum designed around the big idea. Our analysis provides evidence for potential levels of sophistication within the hypothetical LP, while also revealing common alternative conceptions or areas of limited understanding that could form barriers to progress if not addressed by instruction. For example, many students' understanding of Solar System phenomena was limited by either alternative ideas about gravity or limited application of momentum in their explanations. Few students approached a scientific-level explanation, but their responses revealed possible stepping stones that could be built upon with appropriate instruction.

ABSTRACT:Translating written curricular materials into rich, complex, learning environments is an undertheorized area in science education. This study examines two critical cases of teachers enacting a technology-rich curriculum focused on the development of complex reasoning around biodiversity for fifth graders. Two elements emerged that significantly impact teacher enactment-their conceptions of authenticity (authentic learning/authentic science) and their view of science (descriptive/inferential). The results suggest that disentangling the common conflation of these two elements supports a broader definition of inquiry science teaching that is more sensitive to context and individual teacher enactment.C 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 92: 973 -993, 2008