The purpose of this investigation was to explore changes in undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants' (TAs') content knowledge and beliefs about teaching within the context of an inquiry-based laboratory course. TAs received professional development (PD), which was informed by the TA training literature base and was designed for TAs…

Calculus at the college level has significant potential to serve as a pump for increasing the number of students majoring in STEM fields. It is a foundation course for all STEM majors and, if mastered well, should provide students with a positive and successful first-year experience and gateway into more advanced courses. Studies have shown that a…

This paper is focused on an innovation which involved students being assessed on short written responses to an issue to be addressed in the following classroom session. The innovation was evaluated through a student survey, individual and focus-group interviews with participants, and the analysis of a critical friend. Positive findings included…

Employers seek college graduates with leadership skills, but studies indicate not all students graduate with leadership ability. Furthermore, an interdisciplinary perspective of leadership implies that leadership learning and ability can be achieved with a variety of methods. This study sought to understand how reading fiction, including comic…

The ongoing popularity and increased availability of online college courses and programs has attracted a greater diversity of students. Along with continued female-majority enrollment, increasing numbers of students of traditional college age and students from a variety of ethnicity groups are taking online courses. The prevailing guiding…

The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of changing a laboratory physiology course for undergraduate students from a traditional step-by-step guided structure to an inquiry-based approach. With this aim in mind, quantitative and qualitative evaluations of learning outcomes (individual subject-specific tests and group interviews)…

The purpose of this research was to study primary science students' conceptual development as it related to their understanding of materials and their properties: in particular, to determine how and why some students changed their concepts while others did not. The participants were thirty-two Grade 5 (10-11 year old) students. An instructional…

This study examined recall (Rcl) differences of high, average and low achieving fifth-grade elementary students (72) for an environmental education video with supporting pedagogical materials. In addition, it assessed the motivational level of all students. Recall assessment was carried out one-week and twenty-weeks after intervention. Main…

Inquiry has been the framework for guiding reform-based science instruction. All too often, the role of technology is treated tacitly without contributions to this framework. This case study examines a collection of pre-service teachers enrolling in two educational technology courses and the role these experiences play in promoting inquiry…

The political events of the last decade and the Arab Spring have made it more important than ever for Americans to understand the language, culture, and history of the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. Study abroad is one important method that can significantly increase American students' understanding of the Arabic language and the culture…

This research looked into the effectiveness of a campaign at the Universiti Sains Malaysia for a compulsory ban on disposable plastics. Although there was high awareness of the "Say No to Plastic Bags" bags campaign, and moderate compliance on campus, we wondered whether a compulsory approach would maintain the desired behaviours off…

Combining adaptive hypermedia methods with strategies proposed by instructional theory and motivation models, an adaptable tutorial was designed and developed. The aim of this study was to assess whether the goals of an adaptable tutorial, which individualized instruction based on student motivation and prior knowledge, were being met (i.e.…

Situational interest has been identified as an important motivational variable that has an impact on students' academic performances, yet little is known about how the specific variable of the learning environment might trigger students' situational interest. The purpose of this study was to investigate sources that stimulate the interest of…