There are many choices for learning mathematics for engineering students with courses available in face-to-face, blended and fully online modalities. Students are demanding more flexibility in their programs, however the temptation to misuse this flexibility to avoid mathematical studies until it is too late can be an unfortunate side effect. A…

Since the foundation of the Khan Academy (2006), a great deal of attention has been generated to the term "flipped classrooms" (also known as "reverse" or "backwards" classrooms), which is a (new) pedagogical movement that reverses the traditional paradigm of class lecture and homework. This approach subordinates…

This article presents the importance of using multimedia in the math classes by an example of multimedia lesson about definite integral and the results of the research carried out among the students of the first years of faculty, divided into two groups of 25. One group had the traditional lecture about the definite integral, while the other one…

Many different versions of Problem-based Learning (PBL) are used today. To be consistent in evaluating the effectiveness of PBL, the focus in this paper is on what Howard Barrows called authentic PBL (aPBL). In aPBL students are empowered with the learning process; key distinguishing features are that the students teach each other the new…

We describe findings from a research partnership involving a global airline manufacturing company (The Boeing Company), and learning scientists and aeronautical engineers from the University of Washington. Our starting point for the partnership focused on an 8-hour introductory composites course that was designed for company employees. In phase…

In recent years, a consensus has emerged among researchers that teacher quality matters enormously for student performance. Students taught by more-effective teachers learn substantially more over the course of the year than students taught by less-effective teachers. Yet little is known about what makes for a more-effective teacher. Most research…

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental study comparing a "productive failure" instructional design (Kapur in Cognition and Instruction 26(3):379-424, 2008) with a traditional "lecture and practice" instructional design for a 2-week curricular unit on rate and speed. Seventy-five, 7th-grade mathematics students from a…

Education within Second Life frequently recapitulates the "sage on the stage" as students sit their avatars down in chairs in the virtual world and listen to or read an instructor's lecture while watching a slideshow. This conceptual article explores alternative active learning techniques supporting independent and collaborative learning…

Student performance in lecture-based versus case study-based instruction was compared in this study. Case-based teaching that emphasized problem solving and discussion significantly improved student performance on exams throughout the semester and enhanced students' abilities to correctly answer application- and analysis-type questions. (Contains…

Research into the effects of large classes demonstrates that students are disadvantaged in terms of higher order learning because interactions between teachers and students occur at lower cognitive levels. This has significance for social work education, with its emphasis on the development of critical thinking and problem solving, both higher…

In this study, the effects of teacher-directed and self-directed problem-solving strategies on students' attitudes toward physics were explored. Problem-solving strategies were used with the experimental group, while the control group was instructed using traditional teaching methods. The study was conducted with 270 students at various high…

This study mainly explored the effect of applying web-based collaborative learning instruction to the accounting curriculum on student's problem-solving attitudes in Technical Education. The research findings and proposed suggestions would serve as a reference for the development of accounting-related curricula and teaching strategies. To achieve…

This paper reports the results of an exploratory study of the perceptions of and approaches to mathematical proof of undergraduates enrolled in lecture-based and problem-based "transition to proof" courses. While the students in the lecture-based course demonstrated conceptions of proof that reflect those reported in the research literature as…

This article focuses on one instructor's evolution from formal lecturing to interactive teaching and learning in a statistics course. Student perception data are used to demonstrate the instructor's use of communication to align the content, students, and instructor throughout the course. Results indicate that the students learned, that…

Two groups of middle school students were taught U.S. colonial history during a 5-week period using 2 different instructional strategies. In the experimental group, concepts and problem-solving strategies were explicitly taught; in the control group, content was presented using lectures and reading. All students took a pretest and several…