Students develop process skills through repeated practice of data interpretation, problem solving, and critical thinking. The primary literature provides a rich source of data and application problems to engage students in this practice within the context of chemistry content knowledge. However, most existing classroom activities based on the…

Metacognition is a key to effective learning, foundational to critical thinking and fostering scholarly and professional identity. Yet many faculty are uncertain how to integrate metacognitive skill development into classes. This article describes two metacognitive instruments, the TTM-LS and the LSSA, that are short, simple to use, and discipline…

Helping students recognize the value of humanistic inquiry can be challenging, especially in required courses. This essay presents a solution: an assignment in which students were asked to pitch one of the required readings to Netflix for adaptation. Through close readings of student responses and an analysis of the "so what" component…

Art and design students in higher education often prioritize design skills over written communication. With the opportunity to restructure courses around increased asynchronous flexibility arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the author of this manuscript (who is also the course instructor) has developed a hybrid-blended course design in the art…

This paper explores how goal-setting activities in a course were used to promote a growth mindset in students. Research shows many benefits for students with a growth mindset that emphasizes learning and addressing challenges by focusing on effort and process rather than judgments about success or ability. Activities designed to prompt students to…

This article presents the results of a 2016 classroom research study assessing the impact of open pedagogy on student skills mastery in English 101, a first-year undergraduate composition course at a two-year community college in North America. Ninety-two students in five sections used the same free OER course materials, but two sections were…

The paper shows that Tuning Project has generated indifference more than resistance within the French academic community. It proposes an analysis of the reasons of this situation: difficulties arising from Tuning itself, the resistance of the French academic tradition, the institutional inhibitors and facilitators. The impact of Tuning on French…

The authors recently studied how well schools were teaching a a range of complex, higher-order skills. Their findings were grim. Out of 25 skills that researchers have found to be critical to success in life and work, just three were the focus of most instruction: recall, application, and (occasionally) analysis. Even when teachers explicitly made…

Although written communication is a foundational skill, especially for careers in management, faculty can be reluctant to utilize writing assignments for a number of reasons including the subjective nature of and time involved in grading. In this article, we present the IDEAL framework--an andragogical tool developed in an effort to address these…

This article explores the value of using embedding to extend the notion of first exposure learning in flipped classroom practices. It describes a preclass assignment for a meeting and negotiation skills course, in which students are instructed to observe an authentic business meeting, interview participants of the meeting, photograph the…

This essay outlines a unique program developed at Davis & Elkins College: the First Year Symposium. Responding to concerns about the lack of civic engagement in America's youth and the call for colleges and universities to develop strategic plans for addressing democratic learning, the First Year Symposium is a required class for all…

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the current research involving composition writing with respect to students experiencing difficulties. It responds to the fact that composition writing is a largely neglected area in education and research. This paper will review the following: (a) the reasons why writing competence is so vitally…

The recent introduction of a new course in mathematical modeling at Manhattan College has provided students with a valuable opportunity to gain practical experience utilizing tools in applying their mathematical abilities to a real-world problem. This paper describes the steps taken to create this class, from obtaining a real-world partner…

This paper is a self-study that uses the lens of Vygotsky's four phases of sign acquisition to examine one student writer's development of voice through writing produced from 5th grade through her second year of graduate school (17 years). Growing up as a twin--and as a visually impaired individual--the author learned how to use the written word…

This article seeks to provide some modest insights into the pedagogy of higher-order thinking and metacognition and to share the use of color-coded drafts as a best practice in service of both higher-order thinking and metacognition. This article will begin with a brief theoretical exploration of thinking and of thinking about thinking--the latter…