Challenge: While hands-on laboratory experiences are an important component of biomedical engineering curricula, many of the topics which would often benefit most from these experiences are often too time-, space-, and resource-intensive to incorporate into laboratory classes. One such topic is electrophysiology, where phenomena are hard to…

"Using Sentiment Analysis to Ease Students toward or around Macroanalysis" introduces teachers to the mathematical analytical method currently being promoted by Matthew Jockers which he calls macroanalysis. This method uses an algorithm called "R," originally designed by researchers in sociology. In many ways, macroanalysis…

Fourth- and fifth-year pharmacy students attending integrated pharmacotherapy courses at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University completed a medicinal chemistry assignment using computer-based technology. This written assignment encompassed multiple components requiring the use of free online resources to study and illustrate several stages of…

This paper presents how virtual containers enhance the implementation of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) subjects as Open Educational Resources (OER). The publication initially summarizes the limitations of delivering open rich learning contents and corresponding assignments to students in college level STEAM areas. The…

This paper describes a collaboration between a mathematician and a compositionist who developed a sequence of collaborative writing assignments for calculus. This sequence of developmentally appropriate assignments presents peer review as a collaborative process that promotes reflection, deepens understanding, and improves exposition. First, we…

The West Virginia Department of Education's auto grading initiative dates back to 2004--a time when school districts were making their first forays into automation. The Charleston based WVDE had instituted a statewide writing assessment in 1984 for students in fourth, seventh, and 10th grades and was looking to expand that program without having…

Current educational policy in Mexico, as in many other parts of the world, leans heavily on teachers to use computers in their classrooms. This article explores under what conditions teachers are willing to learn about and use digital technology in their work. The authors' central premise is that incorporating technology into teaching is a complex…

An effective learning environment interface (LEI) is a means to enable students to focus on learning and to understand content, while establishing connections and relationships among course activities. Using this fundamental premise, we propose a flexible, user-centered, and seamless LEI which is intended to remediate the fragmented interface…

We implemented two different approaches of using peer review to support undergraduate essay assignments for students taking large second-year courses in life sciences and biology: a web-based online peer review (OPR) approach and a more traditional face-to-face peer review (FPR) approach that was conducted in tutorial settings. The essays…

The influence of asynchronous discussion in a virtual learning environment, Blackboard, on subsequent coursework grades was examined with 166 psychology students to determine whether asking questions of the tutor online, and/or reading the questions and the given advice, influenced the grades on the report they were writing. A repeated-measures…

This paper examines the learning outcomes associated with implementing discussion forums and blog writings using pseudonyms in blended learning. Although anonymity or masking one's identity has been used as a teaching strategy designed to induce higher writing production and lowering anxiety in face-to-face writing instruction, little research has…

Academic writing, individual or collaborative, is an essential skill for today's graduates. Unfortunately, managing writing activities and providing feedback to students is very labor intensive and academics often opt out of including such learning experiences in their teaching. We describe the architecture for a new collaborative writing support…

The authors tested the predictions of a game theory model of plagiarism, using a test population of student papers submitted to an online plagiarism detection program, over five semesters in a non-majors biology course with multiple sections and high enrollment. Consistent with the model, as the probability of detection and the penalty if caught…

In this article, the author investigates the teaching and writing of poetry within public school spaces, illuminating how the work of poetry in an Academic Interventions classroom stirs new visions of who the students and the teacher can be. The study involves five teachers from a range of rural, urban, and suburban districts. These teachers…

The use of social technologies, such as wikis and chats, has brought a renewed attention to L2 collaborative writing. Yet, a question that still remains to be answered is the extent to which learners' writing is enhanced when using these tools. By analyzing learners' individual and collaborative writing, this study (a) explores L2 learners'…