Fast-growing and evolving online content has enabled responsive curriculum updates to support students' learning of how to apply concepts to understand and solve real world problems. Written case studies have long served this purpose in a wide variety of disciplines, and many educators have seen value in presenting cases through the use of online…

Many courses in higher education rely on the hierarchical organization of Bloom's taxonomy to categorize and sequence learning. Introductory courses on scripture often emphasize remembering content and background as a basis for applying the sacred text to one's life. However, a review of the literature demonstrates little support for the widely…

Engagement is an essential factor in successful outcomes for students. Several studies have shown that the use of Twitter in the higher education classroom has the potential to increase student engagement. Student engagement increases students' academic success, because they are interacting with the course content, peers and the course instructor…

The social, economic, and educational upheaval that has been occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, the concurrent and stressful conversation about race and racism in the United States, and domestic political turmoil has turned the world on its head. In these so-called "unprecedented times," traditional higher education appears to be on…

The delivery of online university courses has continued to grow for more than a decade. New advances in technology have made the efficient delivery of courses possible, as well as increasing the collections of tools for students to cheat. Cheating results in the atrophy of the student's academic integrity, it has the potential to damage a…

This piece reports on an early attempt at gamification (reframing post-secondary classrooms drawing on the structure of games). The attempt began in the 2011-2012 academic year and is structured to allow students substantial autonomy in determining which assignments, and how many of them, to complete over the course of the semester. Initial…

The reliability of an assessment is defined as the extent to which candidates' results would remain stable if the entire assessment exercise was repeated. Whilst numerous studies have evaluated the reliability of written examinations, relatively little has been done to quantify the reliability of internal teacher assessment within schools. This is…

This book examines the cause of the student achievement gap, suggesting that the prevailing emphasis on socioeconomic factors, sociocultural influences, and teacher quality is misplaced. The cause of the achievement gap is not differences in parenting styles, or the economic advantages of middle-class parents, or differences in the quality of…

This paper reports on the evaluation of an ambitious attempt to embed academic literacy support within a core content course for first-year students at the University of the South Pacific. The course is offered in both blended and online modes, catering for on-campus and off-campus students, respectively, using Moodle as the virtual learning…

The inclusion of supplemental online assignments and in-class active learning activities can lead to greater levels of student engagement and learning. Students reported that they were more engaged in the classroom and felt that both helped them in exam preparation. Both were also shown to have positively affected student performance and, perhaps…

Reading before class has been demonstrated to improve student learning. This article describes the installation and effectiveness of a strategy to encourage student class preparation. The strategy, called the Class-to-Class Method, has been implemented in a large private university in Chile. The university hopes that this innovation will reduce…

Gamification is the use of game design elements and game mechanics in non-game contexts. This idea has been used successfully in many web based businesses to increase user engagement. Some researchers suggest that it could also be used in web based education as a tool to increase student motivation and engagement. In an attempt to verify those…

The author of this article questions what has been gained from Berrett's exploration of the connections between competency development and individual required courses. She concludes from this analysis that students' competency development is a responsibility that cuts across many courses and many levels of expected student proficiency. To put it…

The aim of this paper is to report on an ongoing experiment in an enquiry-based approach to feedback. Over the course of four years, almost 1800 students have studied a final-year undergraduate module involving a mid-term assignment and end of module examination. Feedback on the assignment is delivered through a process which involves the…

The authors explore how and to what extent students use their textbooks. Data was collected through a survey regarding when reading is primarily done, how the textbook is used for studying, and which specific study strategies the students used. The results indicate that students know it is important to read, know the professor expects them to…