Failure is often taken as a given in higher education, as an inevitable part of learning new things. Yet, it remains a part of learning that students tend to fear, and faculty tend to neglect. As faculty, we do not always strategize with or leverage our students' struggles and failures for improved learning. Instead, we hope that students learn…

Contract cheating is, potentially, a serious threat to the quality of higher education around the world. Prior research has focused on student perspectives and the companies themselves, but the staff view is poorly understood, despite staff being a major stakeholder with considerable influence over strategies designed to address contract cheating.…

Effective instructor feedback can be used to increase student learning, provided that students read and apply this feedback, which is not always the case. The current study investigates an approach which may encourage students to read and immediately apply instructor-provided feedback. This is done by giving students the opportunity to submit…

This article introduces a leadership philosophy exercise where students reflect on their values and prepare a statement of what they intend to do as a leader in their careers. This exercise has the potential to add value to leadership classes or seminars where personal leadership is the focus. By using the leadership philosophy exercise, I argue…

The purpose of this study was to test whether increasing the relevancy of course assignments in a large multisection introductory public-speaking course would lead to improvements in student perceptions of course outcomes. Survey responses from 1,878 students were analyzed to test whether differences exist between students enrolled in classes held…

Peer review is an established strategy for improving the quality of students' writing. This study moves beyond the focus on outcomes to assess the peer-review process. In particular, this study focuses on the timing of the peer review, a highly structured feedback form, and student writers' revisions after engaging in peer review. This study draws…

This is an exploratory study about engaging students in mathematics learning both inside and outside of the classroom of an introductory proof course. The author utilized the framework of scholarship of teaching and learning as a guide to ensure the research process was carried out systematically. This study was conducted through one cycle of…

Reading before class has been demonstrated to improve student learning. This article describes the installation and effectiveness of a strategy to encourage student class preparation. The strategy, called the Class-to-Class Method, has been implemented in a large private university in Chile. The university hopes that this innovation will reduce…

Learning to write well is a significant outcome of higher education, as confirmed and illustrated in the Written Communication VALUE Rubric of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Scholars agree that writing and thinking are linked. Thinking about this relationship between writing and thinking in the context of…

Purpose: The purpose of this Delphi study was to explore single-parent nontraditional student experiences within nontraditional university classroom environments and to determine methods for providing better support within the classroom setting. Methodology: The Delphi technique was conducted through 3 survey rounds to explore ways professors and…

A capstone experience serves as a culminating exercise for students to assimilate the information learned in a course and to realize how to use the material and skills in different contexts. Both majors and nonmajors benefit from having the material in the introductory course consolidated in such a way, for later study in the field and to more…

This paper explores the educational benefits of introducing the aspect-oriented programming paradigm into a programming course in a study on a sample of 75 undergraduate software engineering students. It discusses how using the aspect-oriented paradigm, in addition to the object-oriented programming paradigm, affects students' programs, their exam…

This paper illustrates a teaching innovation that took a traditional role playing exercise based on a case study and added some nuances that amplified the learning experience. The example illustrated in this paper was a didactic negotiation exercise intended to teach simple, basic negotiation principles like zone of possible agreement (ZOPA),…

Adopting Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles in order to create online course content allows higher education faculty members to reach out, not only to learners with disabilities, but also to learners who are increasingly using mobile devices to connect to campus and to each other. This article outlines 5 key strategies for creating and…

The ubiquitousness of images in the digital era highlights the importance of individuals' visual communication skills in the 21st Century. We conducted a literature review of visual literacy initiatives in academic institutions to illustrate best practices for imparting these skills in students. The literature review identified five categories of…