Although satisfaction with academic experience in the context of higher education has been an area of research for nearly 40 years, it is still unclear how pedagogical practices in the development of thinking skills are related to students' satisfaction. This study aims to investigate the relationships between students' satisfaction and the levels…

This paper describes a universal high-impact practices (HIPs) taxonomy for intentional design of engaging educational experiences. Our taxonomy provides explicit definitions for the quality elements that make HIPs engaging, thus providing a tool to increase parity across HIP experiences. It can be applied to any educational experience and provides…

Learning objectives (LOs) are a pillar of course design and execution and thus a focus of curricular reforms. This study explored the extent to which the creation and usage of LOs might be facilitated by three leading chatbots: ChatGPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Google Gemini Advanced. We posed three main questions, as follows: "question…

The call to increase student participation in high-impact practices (HIPs) to improve student learning, satisfaction, and retention is being answered in a multitude of ways. Faculty and staff involved in undergraduate research see this as validation of their efforts, which it is. However, Kuh & O'Donnell's (2013) work challenges research…

To investigate the variation in active learning used in college science courses, the authors analyzed 57 comparison studies published in three prominent science education journals. Focusing on three sources of variation--(a) the active learning activities, (b) other pedagogical features, and (c) course structure/design--they found that most…

One of the central problems in curriculum design is to find a rational basis for the selection of subject content and the assessment of student progression. Without good reasoning, decisions about the selection of content according to various levels of complexity would be left to personal opinion of the faculty members and a reasoned debate among…

Engineering education has increasingly become an area of interest at the P-12 level, yet attempts to align engineering knowledge, skills, and habits to existing elementary and secondary educational programming have been parochial in nature (e.g., for a specific context, grade, or initiative). Consequently, a need exists to establish a coherent…

Over the last few years, I have sat in the opening sessions of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) conference and felt equal parts concern and conviction. In 2015 and 2016, opening speakers enumerated the challenges and opportunities that confront honors educators in a rapidly changing higher education landscape. I sympathized with their…

As stakeholders of educational systems, teachers are urged to participate in social change through the implementation of critical thinking skills into the educational setting. English language teaching has primarily focused on critical thinking, particularly in the recent years. Therefore, teachers are required to examine their teaching materials…

This paper describes a corequisite pairing of Integrated Reading and Writing (INRW) and Humanities (HUMA) 1301 taught at San Jacinto College North in Houston, Texas. The authors describe their planning process, which combined course learning outcomes with cognitive theory and best-practice resources for effective teaching. These complementary…

The idea of threshold concepts (TC) has been well received across the higher education community. However the concept's framework is still evolving and the literature uses the framework in different ways. Just over a decade since the idea first captured interest, it is opportune to explore the nature of that discourse, and the kinds of enquiry…

While learning and teaching English as an additional language are lifelong learning processes for both learners and teachers, these two sectors are largely dominated by West-centric linguistic and cultural imperialism, epistemic hegemony, racism, and neoliberalism, which are tied to colonialism and imperialism. In light of this issue, I argue that…

In response to research raising concerns about developmental placement, new placement systems and curricular models designed to increase the number of students placed into entry-level college courses have emerged in recent years. These systems aim to more accurately identify students who may benefit from some type of developmental instruction and…

Here we describe a 4-yr course reform and its outcomes. The upper-division neurophysiology course gradually transformed from a traditional lecture in 2004 to a more student-centered course in 2008, through the addition of evidence-based active learning practices, such as deliberate problem-solving practice on homework and peer learning structures,…

Over the past several decades, numerous reports have been published advocating for changes to undergraduate science education. These national calls inspired the formation of the National Academies Summer Institutes on Undergraduate Education in Biology (SI), a group of regional workshops to help faculty members learn and implement interactive…