This essay shows how one professor teaching "Introduction to Buddhism" sought to counteract his students' view that Chinese and Tibetan forms of Buddhism represented a deviation from a "pure" Indian Buddhism rather than worthwhile forms of creativity and religiosity in themselves. A simple comparative assignment that asked a…

We describe a novel, university-level, introductory biology course that uses evolution as a narrative framework. Our course conveys the content in an introductory biology course by telling the story of the evolution of life on Earth. We begin with early Earth environments in which biological molecules and processes evolved and led to the first…

Progress is made in science by constructing many models (possibly of different complexities), testing them against measurements, and determining which of them explain the data the best. It is my observation, however, that in many introductory physics labs we provide students with the materials and methods to verify the "correct" model of…

Research-based assessments (RBAs) measure how well a course achieves discipline-specific outcomes. Educators can use outcomes from RBAs to guide instructional choices and to request resources to implement and sustain instructional transformations. One challenge for using RBAs, however, is a lack of comparative data, particularly given the skew in…

Basic knowledge of ideas of causal inference can help students to think beyond data, that is, to think more clearly about the data generating process. Especially for (maybe big) observational data, qualitative assumptions are important for the conclusions drawn and interpretation of the quantitative results. Concepts of causal inference can also…

Using geographic information systems (GIS), spatial data, and web mapping tools to enrich teaching and learning in geography courses is an effective way to integrate critical thinking and spatial analysis into the classroom (or virtual classroom). This lesson describes mapping song lyrics through ArcGIS Online. It explores how students analyze and…

Students learn many concepts in the introductory statistics course, but even our most successful students end up with rigid, ritualized knowledge that does not transfer easily to new situations. In this article we describe our attempt to apply theories and findings from learning science to the design of a statistics course that aims to help…

R and Python are commonly used software languages for data analytics. Using these languages as the course software for the introductory course gives students practical skills for applying statistical concepts to data analysis. However, the reliance upon the command line is perceived by the typical nontechnical introductory student as sufficiently…

Teaching simple circuits and Ohm's law to students in the introductory classroom has been extensively investigated through the common practice of using incandescent light bulbs to help students develop a conceptual foundation before moving on to quantitative analysis. However, the bulb filaments' resistance has a large temperature dependence,…

This article describes a dataset on pop songs that charted on the Billboard Top 40 and/or at one or more of five radio stations, three in Chicago, Illinois, and two in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from the early 1960s through 1970. The dataset includes 5746 observations and 26 variables. In the body of the paper article, we describe how the cleaned…

The authors adapted a lab-in-the-field experiment emulating the dynamic extraction of a fishery to create a Web-based classroom experiment. The game includes a multi-player version analogous to an open-access problem and a single-player version analogous to the social planner problem. This game is helpful in introductory microeconomics courses to…

Data reproducibility is becoming increasingly important in the social sciences, but it has yet to be incorporated into many undergraduate sociology programs. This note describes a service-learning activity that can be added to an introductory statistics course. Students partner with a nonprofit and analyze quantitative data to answer questions…

The Exploding Carts is a popular introductory physics activity in which a one-dimensional explosion is simulated utilizing two dynamics carts that are pushed apart by a spring-loaded plunger released from one of the carts. Traditional treatments of the Exploding Carts usually involve multiple trials where the mass of one or both of the carts is…

Problems of optimization in natural science, technology, economics, and management are of great interest. Students also usually find them intriguing. However, the selection of such problems in introductory undegraduate physics textbooks is very limited and should be broadened. To that end, a model of traffic flow optimization, simple enough for…

This article explores the efficacy of specifications grading in undergraduate political science classes. Specifications grading organizes instruction around a set of learning objectives and evaluates student success based on the achievement of carefully articulated specifications for each assessment. Assessments are considered satisfactory or…