What do we need to know about our students to better provide for more equitable outcomes? Who will succeed depends on many factors, and student personality traits constitute one factor that has received less attention in the engagement and teaching literature. The aim of the present study is to add to discussions on teaching in higher education by…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the use of problem-based learning (PBL) with engineering students at a technical university in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach: The setting provided a unique opportunity to evaluate the impact of PBL, since Universiti Kuala Lumpur offers both the traditional, predominantly…

When students and teachers behave in ways that reinforce learning as a spectator sport, the result can often be a classroom and overall learning environment that is mostly limited to transmission of information and rote learning rather than deep approaches towards meaningful construction and application of knowledge. A group of college instructors…

This study aimed to contribute to the growing literature on learning approaches and teacher self-efficacy beliefs by examining associations between prospective elementary school teachers' learning approaches in a social studies teaching methods course and their social studies teaching efficacy beliefs. One hundred ninety-two prospective elementary…

In South Africa, geography education students' approach to deep learning has received little attention. Therefore the purpose of this one-shot experimental case study was to evaluate the extent to which first-year geography education students used deep or surface learning in an embedded problem-based learning (PBL) format. The researchers measured…

Aim/Purpose: To investigate the effectiveness of incorporating wiki technology in an undergraduate biostatistics course for improving university students' collaborative learning, approaches to learning, and course performance. Methodology: During a three year longitudinal study, twenty-one and twenty-four undergraduate students were recruited by…

With an increasing awareness that many undergraduates are passive during teaching sessions, calls for instructional methods that allow students to become actively engaged have increased. Cooperative learning has long been popular at the primary and secondary level and, within recent years, higher education. However, empirical evidence of the…

The current study examined approaches to teaching in a postgraduate psychology sample. This included considering teaching-focused (information transfer) and student-focused (conceptual changes in understanding) approaches to teaching. Postgraduate teachers of psychology (N = 113) completed a questionnaire measuring their use of a teacher- or…

Evaluating the quality of inquiry using technology in blended contexts at university is a complex phenomenon as there are many variables which could account for qualitative variation in the experience. This study looks at reasons for qualitative variation in the university student experience of inquiry using technologies. It considers approaches…

The challenge of teaching programming in higher education is complicated by problems associated with large class teaching, a prevalent situation in many developing countries. This paper reports on an investigation into the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning of programming in a class of more than 200 students. A course and…

In this article, we report the findings from a study exploring the effects of a problem-based learning (PBL) approach to teaching and learning on learning outcomes for master's of social work (MSW) students. Students who participated in a PBL pilot project were compared with students who did not participate in 5 outcome areas: social work…

It is important to demonstrate to those taking courses for new teachers that approaches to learning have a relational nature--that they are influenced by the teaching and learning context. This article describes a workshop activity, based on the Revised Study Process Questionnaire. Workshop participants recorded their approaches to learning in two…

There has been substantial research evidence concerning the learning approaches of students in Western and non-Western contexts. Nonetheless, it has been a decade since research in the South Pacific was conducted on the learning approaches of tertiary students. The present research examined the learning approaches of Fijian and other Pacific…

Objective: Enhanced knowledge retention and a preference towards a deep learning approach are desirable pedagogical outcomes of case-based learning (CBL). The CBL literature is sparse with respect to these outcomes, and this is especially so in the area of biochemistry. The present study determined the effect of CBL vs. non CBL on knowledge…