Purpose: Online resources can be helpful for students and can augment the content presented in learning environments. A team consisting of four biologists, a graduate student, instructional designer and media developers collaborated on the design, development and evaluation of first-year biology online tutorials in a Canadian University. The…

Background: Learning to use software using screencast videos with worked examples in the corresponding practice files presents a classic split-attention problem that requires learners to mentally integrate information from the video with a target application. While there is evidence that splitting attention either temporally or spatially adversely…

Active-learning pedagogical practices are encouraged in the education literature to improve academic outcomes. The research reported in this paper explored the effect of real-time interactive polling--a type of active learning--on three measures of academic outcome: final marks, student engagement, and failure probability. To provide credible…

This study explores the impact of screencast feedback on maths tests for junior and high school students. While prior research emphasises the influence of feedback on learning, its effectiveness varies with type and delivery. Although studies in higher education observe improved precision and emotional connections through screencast feedback, its…

In the context of increased concerns about student engagement across the higher education sector, which have intensified subsequent to the rapid transition to online delivery in March 2020, this small-scale research project aimed to explore the motivations for student engagement in self-selecting learning development (LD) online tutorials. The…

When the first national lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic occurred, all higher educational institutions in Ireland moved to remote learning and have effectively remained in this mode ever since. The situation presented enormous challenges for many mathematics lecturers who had not delivered lectures or tutorials online before. This study looks…

The concept of flipping the classroom and flipped learning is becoming increasingly more popular in secondary schools. Although more prevalent in tertiary teaching, flipped learning has a number of affordances that may address the challenging demands of teaching secondary mathematics. While enactments of the approach vary, flipped learning…

This article delivers an evaluation of a pedagogical intervention implemented within a first-year undergraduate university module. The intervention, termed the student-led tutorial (SLT), is based on the concept of the tutorless tutorial and presents a platform for student learning which was designed to increase active learning prior to their…

Learning quantum mechanics is challenging, even for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Research-validated interactive tutorials that build on students' prior knowledge can be useful tools to enhance student learning. We have been investigating student difficulties with quantum mechanics pertaining to the double-slit experiment in…

Undergraduate students are increasingly working with academic staff to evaluate and design teaching materials in Higher Education, thereby moving from being passive consumers of knowledge to genuine partners in their education. Here we describe a student partnership project run at the University of Cambridge, which aimed to improve undergraduate…

This paper analyses new learning experiences of first year pattern technology students at a university of technology, in the context of selected characteristics of authentic learning theories. The paper contributes to existing knowledge by proposing a method that could be followed for design-based subjects in a vocational education setting.…

Explicit emphasis on teaching science process skills leads to both gains in the skills themselves and, strikingly, deeper understanding of content. Here, we created and tested a series of online, interactive tutorials with the goal of helping undergraduate students develop science process skills. We designed the tutorials in accordance with…

Students' attendance and engagement with teaching and learning practices is perceived as a critical element for academic performance. Even with stipulated attendance policies, students still choose not to engage. The study employed a principal component analysis to analyze first- and second-year students' perceptions of the importance of the 12…

Tutorials are a common complementary method of achieving student engagement with material covered in lectures, as students achieve deeper understanding by being involved in small group discussions. However, in an attempt to provide students with a taste of everything the industry has to offer, the Centre for Forensic Science at the University of…

We report on the implementation of a monitoring scheme by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. The scheme was introduced in an attempt to increase the level and quality of students' engagement with certain aspects of their undergraduate course. It is well documented that students with higher…