Creativity is more important than ever in today's knowledge-based economy. Although many students doubt their own creativity, very few exercises are designed to help them access this ability. We believe that self-expression and self-reflection are important for understanding personal creative ability. Jung introduced the mandala to promote these…

Prior to the recycling process, raising awareness of plastic waste impact, e.g., polluting oceans worldwide, is undoubtedly a first attempt to tackle this pandemic environmental issue. With this in mind, the presented practical session is an effort to entice an interdisciplinary audience of science undergraduates toward a sustainable future. The…

Linear algebra students are typically introduced to the problem of how to convert from one coordinate system to another in a very abstract way. Often, two bases for a given vector space are provided, and students are taught how to determine a transition matrix to be used for changing coordinates. If students are successful in memorizing this…

New research points to the future of education as online, student-centered, collaborative, and community-based--all largely absent from today's educational landscape. This timely guide shows middle, high school, and college students how to undertake research to address challenges in their curriculum and communities. The approach is deliberately…

The body of literature on a Writing-to-Learn (WTL) approach in math courses offers up a variety of assignment types from which to choose. However, few of these articles provide empirical evidence on the ways these writing assignments contribute to students' learning. This mixed-methods study, conducted at the University of New Mexico, a…

This case provides auditing students with an opportunity to perform substantive tests of inventory using realistic-looking source documents. The learning objectives are to help students understand: (1) the procedures auditors perform in order to test inventory; (2) the source documents used in auditing inventory; and (3) the types of misstatements…

This guide is intended to make it easier to implement the Reading for Meaning strategy from the ultimate guide to teaching strategies, "The Strategic Teacher". When you and your colleagues want to explore more ways to help students understand what they read, make inferences, and support their thinking with evidence, this book is your ideal tool.…

A science fiction problem was placed before the students, they had to plan a profitable trip for Galactic spaceship tour and for which group of five students was made to solve the problem, which would encourage cooperative efforts, and different people in the group could work on different aspects. An important part of this problem is that students…

Presents a writing assignment from a class in general semantics in which students write about a personal application of general semantics. Presents a paper submitted by one student. (SR)

Offers two assignments to develop students' problem solving skills: the first focuses on drawing issues, distinguishing key from subsidiary issues, and determining the relative importance of supportive details; the second helps students develop coping skills, relating the known to the unknown in a simulation of the work environment. (RL)

Presents a method to make precalculus college freshmen accountable to the class for doing at least some of their assigned homework problems by making each student an expert on one or more of the assignments. (ASK)

A mechanism for using personal computer spreadsheet software to generate unique laboratory and problem assignments in optics for each student and provide corresponding solutions that can be checked quickly is described. The method minimizes some students' tendency to inspect others' solutions without solving problems themselves. Another…

Describes an assignment in which students must integrate writing and negotiation skills with proposal development. Notes that many students have been able to share their problem-solving skills by implementing their proposal at their workplace. Notes students liked the opportunity to select a topic of interest to them. (SG)

Children use creative thinking processes when teachers assign ambiguous rather than specific problems. Suggestions for developing questions that encourage experiential and metaphorical thinking are offered. (DF)

Describes a freshman composition course which employs problem-solving exercises as a writing improvement technique. Notes that sharing ideas while solving problems builds new writers' openness and trust, whereas thinking aloud prepares students to benefit from other writers' thinking protocol methods. Suggests that brainstorming can help students…