Faculty throughout the world abruptly adapted their instructional delivery approaches via technology during the spring, summer, and fall terms in 2020 due to the COVID-19 virus. While faculty used a variety of modalities to disseminate content, such as recorded lectures and online tests, many students who did not prefer online classes experienced…

A challenge for providers of work-integrated learning courses is delivering a meaningful learning experience for students, while collaborating with organisations to ensure adequate support. Evaluating student experience has traditionally been about collecting feedback on teaching methods, course content and learning outcomes, rather than the…

It is well known that interesting questions can stimulate thinking and invite participation. Class exercises are designed to make use of questions to engage students in active learning. In a project toward building a community skilled in software verification and validation (SV&V), we critically review and further develop course materials in…

This teaching note describes my multiyear experience with interventions designed to enhance student engagement and learning through various teaching techniques, most notably active and collaborative learning through local case studies. While other aspects of this course had been successful, I was disappointed in the level of engagement--the…

This paper presents a series of novel project-based learning labs for an introductory robotics course that are developed into a semester-long Robotic Decathlon. The last three events of the Robotic Decathlon are used as three final one-week-long project tasks; these replace a previous course project that was a semester-long robotics competition.…

The existing literature on indicators of an optimal learning environment for high-ability students frequently discusses the concept of challenge. It is, however, not clear what, precisely, constitutes appropriate challenge for these students. In this study, the authors examined an undergraduate honours course, Advanced Cell Biology, which has…

This study uses formal and informal student feedback as a source for understanding the impact of experimental course elements. Responses were used to develop a codebook, which was then applied to the entire dataset. The results inform our understanding of student's conceptions of professional identity, learning styles and curriculum design.…

In 2011, the National Resource Center for The First-Year Experience and Students in Transition revisited its 1999 National Survey of Senior Seminars and Capstone Courses to explore the current state of culminating experiences in American higher education. Drawn from a sample of public and private colleges and universities across the country, the…

Discusses the use of student-based focus groups as one component of university course evaluations. Steps in planning and conducting focus groups are detailed and applied to the evaluation of a freshman-level general health course. Finds that participants wanted to retain the health content but add more of a teaching emphasis to the course.…

Describes an undergraduate course in applied shoreline management offered in three different formats: traditional lecture, half-lecture half-collaborative, and fully cooperative. Student evaluations significantly supported the fully cooperative format over the others. Discusses the reasons for this and includes examples of the questions used in…

Describes implementation, evaluation of World Wide Web-based component in a Rutgers University (New Jersey) advanced clinical pharmacokinetics course. Scheduling accommodated nontraditional students; each week Web pages providing review and supplementary material and an online quiz were posted after class. Comparison with the previous year's…