This article provides computational and rule-based approaches for detecting confusion that is expressed in students' comments in couse forums. To obtain reliable, ground truth data about which posts exhibit student confusion, we designed a decision tree that facilitates the manual labeling of forum posts by experts. However, manual labeling is…

The management and coordination of classroom teaching continues to be a challenge, particularly as enrollment trends suggest that class sizes are growing. In the past, many faculty have divided their large classes into smaller groups to incorporate experiential exercises. In this article, we discuss the challenges of managing an experiential…

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) presents an approach of learning to permit an online and a distant learning for internet users. These systems are confronted with several problems among which the most important: the lack of participants' interactivity in the platform and the dropout of the participants. Those challenges need to be resolved to…

The Group Exercises is a distinctive collaborative group working activity completed by approximately 170 second-year undergraduate chemistry students each year in June. The activity comprises students working in randomly allocated teams of 4-6 members to complete a structured learning package to solve chemistry problems with industrial relevance…

There still appears to be a gap between what online learning promises and what it can deliver in terms of student learning. Developments in online pedagogies and professional learning appear to lag behind the developments in technology and the promised benefits of technological transformation may not be realised. In this paper, we bring together…

The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest turned education on its head this quarter. To keep students engaged, a plethora of techniques were employed, ranging from synchronous lectures and activities via the Zoom platform to the asynchronous online discussion board Piazza. Consideration of students' nonacademic struggles also…

The blended learning method with its supporting electronic tools is a very well-known approach in academic education. In most of its practical applications, direct face to face contacts between students and the teacher as well as students with each other in groups are important elements in the organization of lectures and classes. This is of…

The COVID-19 outbreak across the globe has forced educational institutions including medical schools to suspend campus learning in order to curb the spread of the virus. This has forced the teaching community to think of new avenues and alternate strategies for engaging our students. Many institutes of higher education including medical colleges…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs ) are much less in the news today--but that does not mean that they are no longer important. Rather, their importance now derives from what they demonstrated about the fractured nature of college curricula. Almost all MOOCs were one-offs--a single instructor/performer and a well-bounded subject. MOOCs almost…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) and public and private cloud communities continue to flourish in the field of higher education. However, MOOCs have received criticism in recent years and offer little benefit to students already enrolled at an institution. This article advocates for the collaborative creation and use of institutional, program…

We discuss a mathematics capstone course designed to help students grow in mathematical independence. We describe how the course is structured to support this goal and the major assignments: a course wiki, a group expository project, and an individual problem to solve and extend. Students learn to ask and answer their own questions, helping them…

A new group educational activity based on a treasure hunt is described. Students are asked questions and the answers specify a grid on a map. A specified object in the grid location must be found and photographed, and the photograph submitted electronically (through the Learning Management System) for assessment. Once a series of objects in…

Online education is often assumed to be synonymous with asynchronous instruction, existing apart from or supplementary to face-to-face instruction in traditional bricks-and-mortar classrooms. However, expanding access to computer-mediated communication technologies now make new models possible, including distance learners synchronous online…

With this article, we wish to transmit some key factors of success that we have used personally when faced with the structuring of a teaching programme based on e-learning. In particular, this paper reflects the experience of the authors in the usage of Internet tools in their teaching duties at university, in order to solve several problems that…

Learning Management Systems (LMS) can be used to deliver learning designs that meet students' learning needs. There is a raft of teaching and learning tools that can be enabled in LMS to engage and support learners. The design and ongoing management of these environments rest largely on the knowledge and skills of academic staff. While increasing…