Student motivation within a STEM course is dependent on their perceived relevance and utility of the topics learned. This paper presents an Informative Utility Value Intervention (IUVI) designed to promote perceptions of utility. The IUVI was designed as a series of assignments for general chemistry students in large lecture courses, but the…

The present study investigated the impact of a utility-value intervention on students' behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement. Students assigned to the intervention condition were required to write an essay to connect the course contents with their personal hobbies, interests, or goals three times during the course. The results showed…

Utility value interventions (UVIs) are brief assignments designed to promote students' perceived utility value of the content they are learning. UVIs have been shown to improve students' academic performance in varying STEM courses; however, the use of UVIs in either chemistry courses or upper-level courses has not been well explored. This study…

Longitudinal randomized controlled trials generally assign individuals randomly to interventions at baseline and then evaluate how differential average treatment effects evolve over time. This study shows that longitudinal settings could benefit from "Recurrent Individual Treatment Assignment" ("RITA") instead, particularly in…

Peer collaboration is a foundational skill that emerges in early childhood. Children spend significant time in early educational settings, making it an important setting where young children can learn how to collaborate with peers. However, research on how to support children's collaboration effectively is limited and findings in this area have…

Shifting from open educational resources (OER) to open educational practices (OEP) is the next stage in the OER movement, but there have been few attempts to understand how the next phase in this movement will be achieved. Addressing this question can uncover the potential benefits of OER besides cost reduction. The current study represents the…

This study explores the impact of integrating "The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace" into the undergraduate public health course PBHL 2950: Disparities in Health as a pedagogical tool to enhance student understanding of systemic inequities. Traditional lecture-based methods often fail to effectively convey complex concepts such as…

As institutions of higher education increasingly utilize online learning management systems, college students are asked to submit more assignments online. Under this regime, when most assignments are posted and submitted online, it is possible to know if a student is missing a submission for an imminent deadline, and to intervene proactively to…

Background: Student teachers can find it difficult to inform their classroom practice with knowledge gained from education theory and research. Working with Design and Technology teacher education students, the authors have developed a model to support integration of knowledge-based thinking in lesson design for classroom practice. Purpose: This…

The Occupation-Centered Intervention Assessment (OCIA) was developed as a reflective tool for students to improve their comprehension of occupation-centered practice. Finding new and innovative ways to incorporate occupation-centered assignments can serve as a strategy to develop student integration of occupation-centered practice and allow…

Students possess informal, intuitive ways of reasoning about the world, including biological phenomena. Although useful in some cases, intuitive reasoning can also lead to the development of scientifically inaccurate ideas that conflict with central concepts taught in formal biology education settings, including evolution. Using antibiotic…

Contract cheating -- outsourcing student assignments for a fee -- presents a growing threat to the integrity of higher education. As contract cheating is based on students purchasing assignments that are original (albeit not created by the student), traditional plagiarism detection tools remain insufficient to detect contract cheating. Part of the…

Although there is much discussion exploring the potential causes of plagiarism, there is limited research available which provides evidence as to the academic interventions which may help reduce this. This paper discusses a bespoke English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme introduced at the university level, aimed at improving the academic…

We pilot tested an identity-based relevance-writing intervention designed to support developmental community college students' (N = 54) educational commitment, value, and persistence. The intervention was embedded within regular journal assignments in two study skills courses with a third section serving as a comparison group. The intervention…

The questions in the practice assignments given to students in the form of worksheets or other formats are often grouped by chapter, topic, or concepts. There is a great emphasis on categorization. Most of the end-of-chapter problems in chemistry textbooks are organized by sections. Although this was done with the intention of helping students…