Guest Editorial: A practical approach to understanding - and applying! - the scholarship of application

As many as 80% of papers published by the IEEE Transactions on Education fall within an area known as the scholarship of application. Recently, the TRANSACTIONS established a new set of criteria to evaluate manuscripts submitted in this area. This guest editorial is intended to demystify these new criteria and to help writers avoid some common mistakes. The guidelines given here suggest systematic ways for researchers to design their studies and present their findings that will increase the likelihood of their papers being accepted by the IEEE Transactions on Education. Potential authors will want to be able to support and describe the many carefully researched decisions made in laying out a claim and attempting to prove it. Remember that, in some sense, the author is working as a detective who has made an important claim and is now trying to prove that claim using all the wit and intelligence at your disposal. This editorial is meant to guide these authors in their work.