Drawing on challenges I experienced when teaching a political communication course, I designed an upper-level undergraduate course with the objective of developing students' civic competence and democratic engagement. The major class assignment, which is the focal point of this best practices essay, was a four-step collaborative voter mobilization…

The Common Problems Project (CP2) is an interdisciplinary, problem-based pedagogy that was launched in 2015 by four partner colleges in the State University of New York (SUNY) system (Cortland, Oneonta, Oswego, and Plattsburgh). Since its inception, 100 faculty have participated in CP2 and integrated the pedagogy into 134 courses to implement 47…

Under the new ABET accreditation framework, students are expected to demonstrate "an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions." Traditional, recipe-based labs provide few opportunities for students to engage in realistic experimental design or…

A need for current science education has emerged in enhancing students' deep involvement in scientific practices in core disciplines. Students are encouraged to improve crosscutting concepts and disciplinary core ideas through authentic science practice through constructing theories about the real world, generating questions, conducting…

Developing a professional STEM workforce with a high degree of intercultural competence is essential in today's globalized world.To this end, Higher Education Institutions incorporate reflection to help students make meaning of their learning experiences. In this study, we investigated the development of intercultural and teamwork skills among…

This experiment utilized advanced visualization technology for the delivery of an introductory remote sensing lesson in an undergraduate geography course. Given the numerous immersive visualization solutions available, it is now possible to leverage the capabilities of augmented, mixed, and virtual reality (AR, MR, and VR) technology in a…

A variety of research studies reveal the advantages of actively engaging students in the learning process through collaborative work in the classroom. However, the complex nature of the learning environment in large college general chemistry courses makes it challenging to identify the different factors that affect students' cognitive and social…

To enhance students' learning and help them understand the whole picture of the field of inorganic chemistry, an inorganic laboratory technique course was designed that uses scaffolded, inquiry-based lab experiments and project-based learning. The scaffolded, inquiry-based laboratories taught in the first 8 weeks of the course helped students…

Educational approaches in structural engineering have focused on classical methods for solving problems with manual calculations through assignments, quizzes, and exams. The use of computational software to apply the learned knowledge has been ignored for decades. This paper describes an educational approach to tackle the lack of applicable…

In this paper, we present an overview of a series of 1-credit applied problem solving courses. The goal of these courses was to help students develop their oral and written communication skills, ability to work as a team, and general problem solving skills through preparation and participation in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) and…

Background: Critical thinking is an important student learning outcome in all psychology courses and included in the American Psychological Association's (APA's) goals for the undergraduate major. Objective: The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of integrating a general model of critical thinking into the instruction,…

A call for educational reform motivated this school system to devise an enhanced version of STEM in their middle school. This case provides rich descriptions of how eighth grade middle school teachers, from multiple disciplines, enacted a STEAM team model that integrated Language Arts into STEM. These STEAM team teachers were systematically…

This article examines metaliteracy as a pedagogical model that leverages the assets of MOOC platforms to enhance self-regulated and self-empowered learning. Between 2013 and 2015, a collaborative teaching team within the State University of New York (SUNY) developed three MOOCs on three different platforms--connectivist, Coursera and Canvas--to…

However well-intentioned, standardization and increased testing conflict with theories and research that supports authentic learning and collaboration. Implementing methods to empower and engage students can feel nearly impossible within a high-stake environment. This article discusses the findings of an action research study conducted to explore…

Drawing from the Sheldon and Manktelow collections at SUNY Oswego's Penfield Library, along with sociological criteria for a profession -- graduate-level training, autonomy, peer evaluation and responsibility to the public -- this article reassesses Oswego State Normal School's impact on nineteenth-century teacher education. Descriptions of Oswego…