Physical experiments in classrooms have many benefits for student learning, including increased student interest, participation and knowledge retention. While experiments are common in engineering and physics classes, they are seldom used in first-year calculus, where the focus is on solving problems analytically and, occasionally, numerically. In…

Schools need to develop critical thinkers who are learning collaboratively alongside their peers and teachers. With the support of their community, nonacademic values need to be stressed outside the classroom, where students actively engage in social activities to develop their community and increase the value in their education. Combining these…

Educational escape rooms (ER) are an instructional activity designed to incorporate many elements of recreational ERs, which have become popular in recent years. There are many reasons to consider incorporating educational ERs into K-12 math instruction or after-school programs/camps. First, they are highly motivating for students because they…

Every teacher aspires to create the ideal lesson! You want to convey the knowledge and skills in the best possible way while also keeping learners motivated. In our design case, we focus on the complex skill of collaborative problem-solving (CPS). In today's complex world, the acquisition of CPS competencies is considered an important learning…

In response to the criticism that theory-driven researcher-developed learning tools lack scalability and sustainability in the real world, the design-based implementation research (DBIR) approach was proposed. However, few empirical studies actually describe what a DBIR study looks like and how it can inform readers about learning tool design. We…

This article discusses a pedagogical technique for utilizing breakout rooms for small group discussions and synchronous drawing features in Zoom to create crowdsourced solutions to mathematical problems that involve graphing or visualization. Students begin with specific examples and then move quickly to the development of a more general…

Metacognition supports students in successfully working through struggle by equipping them with the tools to maintain an awareness of what they are doing and to change directions when needed to overcome obstacles. Thus, it is of little surprise that effective problem solvers spend a significant amount of time analyzing tasks relative to the amount…

Educational escape rooms are beneficial for student learning as it relates to critical thinking, decision making under time constraints and practical exploration of real-life work scenarios. This type of learning experience is beneficial across many disciplines with emphasis for healthcare management due to the dynamic nature and common pressures…

Studies have found that some teacher professional development programs that are based on Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) can increase student mathematics achievement. The mechanism through which those effects are realized has been theorized, but more empirical study is needed. In service of this need, we designed a novel measure of…

Using question 28 from the May Problems to Ponder in volume 114, the author and her seventh- and eighth-grade students launched into a discussion of creativity, linearity, piecewise, and recursive definitions of functions. This pattern to ponder provided rich mathematical opportunities for all students in her middle school classroom.

This article provides a brief overview of the instructional strategy known as team-based learning (TBL). It then focuses specifically on the use of one of its integral components in a biblical studies classroom--namely, the "4S application task." The 4S application task, which is one of the fundamental pieces of the learning experience…

Mathematical word problems, sometimes called story problems, are generally defined as "verbal descriptions of problem situations, presented within a scholastic setting, wherein one or more questions are raised the answer to which can be obtained by the application of mathematical operations to numerical data available in the problem statement…

Communication theory can be challenging to teach in an engaging manner. The following original teaching activity suggests a way to incorporate the phenomenon of escape rooms into your theory classroom. Courses: Communication Theory, Introduction to Communication. Objectives: In this activity, students will apply the basic tenets of several…

Despite decades of conversations about student engagement, student success is rarely measured in terms of the capabilities of students to learn with, from, and for others--what Clifton Conrad and Todd Lundberg define as collaborative learning. From their perspective, positioning individual learning as the cornerstone of a college education falls…

The author presents a child-centered approach to teaching, developed through longtime connections with colleagues, which concentrates on the children and provides them time to make their own connections, to learn, to think, and to develop at their own pace with the support of their classmates. Two examples of how mathematics interlaced into…