When students learn, they activate, use, revise, and acquire knowledge. As such, knowledge is a fundamental asset. We advocate for an asset-based approach which capitalizes on students' knowledge through prompts and activities that invite learners to leverage what they already know. Considering knowledge as an asset means that educators must…

An active learning approach to the study of US national security decision making decision making can be achieved through the use of an in-class role-playing simulation. This article considers the importance of solid foundations for simulation design: (1) simulation preparation should be linked to class materials and learning outcomes, but also…

Interest in active learning continues to grow worldwide. Although the large volume of active learning research has provided a myriad of ways to implement active learning in the classroom, the construct remains underdeveloped and difficult to operationalize because of three main issues in the research literature: (a) the confusion surrounding what…

This paper presents a competition-based active learning approach that prepares undergraduate students for careers in the drone industry. The competition-based learning (CBL) approach focuses on preparing students for three key drone industry requirements (1) drone assembly, testing, and validation using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) parts, (2)…

Electrochemistry is omnipresent in our lives, but students often do not recognize that the electrochemistry they learn in general chemistry happens in the batteries on which we depend. Students also may not recognize that they have the power to make greener choices about batteries using their knowledge of chemistry. This 4 h general chemistry…

This article describes the implementation of a student-generated open educational resource project into a majors' organic chemistry laboratory. This scaffolded semester-long project was organized into six phases and designed to promote the goals of teaching students about both green chemistry and real-life applications of the reactions covered in…

The Clemmensen reduction is a common example of a reaction demonstrating the deoxygenation of carbonyl groups, which is a topic that has been widely studied in the field of organic chemistry. The use of trimethylchlorosilane, as a substitute for concentrated hydrochloric acid, allows for the reduction of carbonyl groups. The Clemmensen reduction…

In this paper, we describe a dynamic-model as a strategy to teach DNA transcription and translation in an active way. This activity aims to provide learning beyond memorisation through the simulation of molecular processes, stimulating the elaboration of questions and hypotheses by students. The dynamic consists of four steps, starting with…

The research-based principles, strategies, and practical ideas shared in this article guide and support student engagement as a means for enhancing learning and retention.

As young children encounter animal and plant life, they are eager to figure out where plants and animals come from, which plants are edible, and which animals like to eat different plants. Gardening experiences provide ample opportunities to explore how plants grow, what plants need to grow, how to care for plants, and how to harvest the edible…

Providing patient education for a group is an essential practice for all healthcare providers that has been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), specifically in relation to patients with chronic diseases. This practice requires skills such as adapting communication to meet the…

"Frack Attack" is a transferable classroom activity that combines active learning and teamwork to critically evaluate sustainability topics in contemporary engineering contexts. The activity was recently explored in three chemical engineering courses at Montana State University: two elective courses on sustainable energy (one…

Relevant engineering applications, such as bioseparation of proteins and DNA, soil-cleaning, motion of colloidal particles in different media, electrical field-based cancer treatments, and the cleaning of surfaces and coating flows, belongs to the family of "Applied Field Sensitive Process Technologies" requiring an external field to…

In the past ten years, increasing evidence has demonstrated that scientific teaching and active learning improve student retention and learning gains in the sciences. Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), who play an important role in undergraduate education at many universities, require training in these methods to encourage implementation,…

"Energy literacy" is of great interest to those researching sustainable consumption, particularly with regard to its relationship to domestic energy use. This paper reflects on the pedagogic aspects of fieldwork recently carried out by undergraduate geography students in their own homes to assess energy-related technologies and…