Most chemistry students struggle with interpreting and understanding NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectra and the general concepts of NMR spectroscopy. NMR spectroscopy seems to be difficult to both teach and learn. Therefore, the corresponding courses should be investigated in more detail. We conducted a survey with N = 39 German university…

University students are increasingly taking a digital approach to notetaking in lectures, influenced by technological developments, environmental sustainability, and the Covid-19 pandemic. This research aims to understand the ways in which students currently make digital notes and identify barriers to digital notetaking from a student perspective.…

In their popular book "Made to Stick," Heath and Heath (2007) examined characteristics that make an idea sticky, that is, "understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact--they change your audience's opinions or behavior" (p. 8). Lecture-based instruction is a common but debated pedagogical approach in higher education,…

Escape rooms are becoming prevalent in their use as a form of playful learning and gamification in higher education, often used for a multitude of purposes to enhance students' higher education learning experiences. Whilst studies have reported their valuable uses in a range of contexts, they have often focussed on undergraduates and fewer have…

Student engagement in higher education has been studied from different theoretical perspectives and in different countries. Current issues include both concerns regarding students' attitudes and ambivalence and, in addition, the definition of the concept of student engagement and how various pedagogical approaches may contribute to contrasting…

Purpose: Research on EMI (English-Medium Instruction) has addressed the extent to which content lecturers speaking in their L1 perform as well as when they lecture in English. In this study a lecturer who gave the same lecture in his L1 (Catalan) and English was observed to examine if and how transitioning from one language to another impacts his…

A common use of technology in higher education is the provision of online course materials, invoking an investigation of the ways in which students engage with online course content, and how their participation changes over time. This is particularly necessary in the context of high absenteeism from lectures, where online access may be the only…

Past research has considered the reflective practices of the teacher as an important activity in the learning cycle. Some of it has introduced the term 'reflective teacher', showing that such practice has become increasingly important. This paper discusses literature related to various means of collecting feedback from students, the…

Lecture Capture technologies are becoming widespread in UK Higher Education with many institutions adopting a capture-all approach. Installations of capture devices in all teaching rooms and lecture theatres, scheduled recordings through integration with timetabling and automated distribution through virtual learning environments are swiftly…

Linking between pedagogical content knowledge and high-level subject-matter knowledge in science teacher training remains a challenge. This paper analyses the reaction of beginning student teachers to an activity designed for this purpose, "peer lecturing." This activity was a part of the requirements of an introductory zoology course,…

Recent findings have provided strong evidence that retrieval-based learning is an effective strategy for enhancing knowledge retention and long-term meaningful learning, but it is not a preferred learning strategy for the majority of students. The present research analyzes the application of learning gamification principles in online, open-book,…

In this paper, we propose a social semiotic approach to studying PowerPoint in university classrooms. Our approach is centred on two premises: (1) PowerPoint is a semiotic technology that can be integrated into the pedagogical discourse of classrooms, and (2) PowerPoint technology encompasses three interrelated dimensions of social semiotic…

Burgeoning college enrolments and insufficient funding to higher education have expanded the use of large lecture courses. As this trend continues, it is important to ensure that students can still learn in those challenging learning environments. Within education broadly and undergraduate engineering specifically, active learning pedagogies have…

The inter-rater reliability of university students' evaluations of teaching quality was examined with cross-classified multilevel models. Students (N = 480) evaluated lectures and seminars over three years with a standardised evaluation questionnaire, yielding 4224 data points. The total variance of these student evaluations was separated into the…

Conceptualization and implementation of computer supported teaching and training is currently not tailored to the paradigm of learner centration. Many technical solutions lack transparency and consistency regarding the supported learner activities. An insight into learners activities correlated to learning tasks is needed. In this paper we outline…