Effective teaching requires the use of techniques and strategies to counter student passivity and enhance engagement. Research demonstrates that drawing improves memory retention, increases motivation to learn, provides an opportunity to learn what makes an image an effective communication tool, allows demonstration of conceptual understanding,…

The recent rise in online learning in statistics has made it essential for instructors to teach effectively in that modality. In this retrospective, we reflect on how online course content was added to an introductory statistics course in a graduate public health program and how it was updated over time based on student feedback and instructor…

Active participation of learners has been viewed as the key to the learning process. To constructivists, challenging materials and cooperative activities where students participate and become engaged are essential in classroom instruction. In comparison, classrooms in Chinese heritage culture classrooms, where lectures are the main form of…

We discuss an innovative course model used in first-year calculus courses at a large North American research university, which we refer to as the "Blended Model." We argue that our model takes the best features of lectures, flipped classrooms, and traditional recitations, and gathers them into a cohesive, robust structure that benefits…

This article offers a description and critical evaluation of a novel method for inquiry-based learning (IBL) directed at undergraduate students: a Global Health Hackathon. The hackathon was piloted as part of an "Introduction to Global Health" undergraduate course in order to enable students to gain "and" create knowledge about…

The author of this brief forum article argues that it is time to encourage faculty members to rethink student learning: encourage the scholarship of teaching and expose faculty to key research articles about student learning. Then, building on this knowledge, the academy needs to offer assistance to faculty in designing student-centered…

Contribution: Active classroom programmer (ACP) is a software tool that places minimal pressure on resources, and is shown to help improve student learning while also encouraging a high degree of engagement both during and outside of programming lectures. Background: Programming is difficult for students, largely due to the myriad of…

This article will review the issues surrounding the use of humor as an informal teaching method in higher education lecturing. The impact and usefulness of humor, from both a teacher's and a student's perspective, will be investigated. The aim is to classify the challenges and limitations of using humor in classrooms and to investigate and…

This chapter describes the processes and pedagogies used by one school in transitioning from lecture halls to collaborative learning environments.

In 1970, education theorist Paulo Freire (1970) sharply critiqued dominant pedagogy--or what he called the banking model of education--for stripping students of their agency. In the banking model, he wrote, instructors are empowered as narrating subjects as students who become alienated as passive listening objects. In the decades since, research…

Ask any professor to describe a "first-row student," and you will likely hear a description of an engaged learner who pays attention during class, takes notes, and asks questions. A research study from the 1980s has indicated that undergraduate students sitting in the front and center of the classroom score higher than other students.…

Despite the perceived advantages of student centred learning (SCL) in higher education, novice teaching academics' attempts to implement such approaches may be thwarted by a lack of experience with teaching in general and with SCL in particular, difficulties locating suitable practical advice on SCL, and the demands of early career academic…

Teaching academics are under pressure to move away from traditional lecture-tutorial teaching modes to less traditional forms. Such pressures are in addition to changes to funding arrangements and other developments that increasingly oblige universities to operate as businesses. The flow-on effects for teachers are increased student:staff ratios,…

Introductory biology courses form a cornerstone of undergraduate instruction. However, the predominantly used lecture approach fails to produce higher-order biology learning. Research shows that active learning strategies can increase student learning, yet few biology instructors use all identified active learning strategies. In this paper, we…

Real Analysis is a required class for most undergraduate mathematics majors, but it is also one of the most difficult classes they will take. In this article, the author compares two approaches to teaching in the two analysis classes she has taught. The first one was taught in a traditional lecture-homework-exam format, while the second was taught…