Mosquitoes (Culicidae) are disease vectors, which are responsible for an estimated one million deaths per year. Female mosquitoes, which need blood for survival and reproduction, collect blood with a disease present from a host, and will transmit that disease from one host to another as it feeds on additional food sources. This continuous feeding…

As students have struggled to use the "chip model" (i.e., red and yellow chips representing positive and negative numbers) to model integer addition and subtraction and have found it confusing, the authors developed a series of activities based on adding and removing opposite objects to and from a boat to better help students in this…

The Wiggers diagram showing simultaneous events of the cardiac cycle in composite graphs is one of the most intimidating figures students encounter in their study of physiology. This paper describes a discovery learning activity that walks students through the construction of the Wiggers diagram by focusing on the core concepts of blood flow down…

This paper is a practical how-to guide to help you start using active learning or to have greater success and more fun with it. We categorize active learning techniques as Think, Pair, Share, Composite, Group, Move, or Lead and discuss how to implement activities in each category, along with advice on creating engaging, effective, and equitable…

Biological interactions and associations underlie life's processes at every level of organization. Here, we present a classroom activity that allows students to visualize and understand the connections within almost any biological system, from cell functions to ecological relationships. We recommend that instructors implement this activity to…

The mathematical egg hunt is a hands-on activity designed to help students understand mathematical relations in an Introduction to Proofs course. This activity gives students the opportunity to practice selecting which ordered pairs do and do not belong to a given relation in a moderately competitive egg hunt. It is designed to be low-stakes, yet…

Motivation is a fundamental component in management and organizational behavior courses. At the same time, it can be a complicated topic for teaching and learning due to the number of popular models and theories. The activity described here is a simple and fast way to illustrate the components of two of the most important and practical motivation…

Course: Qualitative Research Methods. Objectives: To provide students with an experiential understanding of the six steps to conducting a thematic analysis: (1) gaining familiarity with the data, (2) creating coding categories or subcategories, (3) generating themes, (4) reviewing themes, (5) labeling themes, and (6) identifying exemplars. To help…

Courses: Public speaking, business and professional communication, group communication. Objectives: This activity will introduce Monroe's Motivated Sequence as a way to organize persuasive arguments; improve students' ability to deliver presentations with consistent content, voice, and style; and improve team-based delivery skills.

Computational modeling and thinking skill sets were previously relegated to computer scientists and programmers. As a result, computational tools are largely unfamiliar to K-12 science teachers and students. Using Mathematical and Computational Thinking and Developing and Using Models were included in the "Next Generation Science…

People often seek advice and social support. One approach for seeking advice is by submitting one's problems/concerns to an advice columnist. More contemporary forms of advice seeking are seen on discussion boards (e.g. Reddit) where individuals ask questions (often anonymously) and gather responses from others. This activity makes use of…

Courses: Fundamentals of Communication, Intercultural Communication, Relational Communication, Public Speaking. Objectives: After completing this unit, students should be able to: reduce listening barriers during conversations on issues of neoliberalism; develop and ask follow-up questions to demonstrate active listening; formulate an argument…

Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are simple concepts that our students seem to quickly understand, yet few of our students grasp the complexity of sustaining intrinsic motivation. This exercise aims to help students better understand that complexity. Students are given a two-part scenario. In Part 1, the individual motives to innovate are…

Although U.S. corporations rely heavily on merit pay programs to distribute pay increases to their employees, many undergraduate students, even those who have held jobs, lack exposure to merit pay programs until they take their first human resource management course. The exercise gives students an opportunity to experience how organizations make…

Authors Kevin McCaughey and Rick Rosenberg demonstrate techniques for using board games to stimulate student-centered language practice that is flexible, productive, engaging, and fun. The article includes tips for efficient game play and for using games with a variety of levels and class sizes. The authors show that playing board games for…