Written communication is essential to student success. Mindfulness exercises may improve thoughts and feelings that support written communication. These exercises are typically delivered to students in small groups such as tutorials. However, first year courses that develop written communication skills are often delivered in large classroom…

Due to the large number of students, instructors teaching high enrollment courses often rely on traditional assignments such as scantron exams and research papers. While these types of assignments are functional and satisfy a purpose, they are typically not meaningful or pleasurable for students. In an introductory information technology course,…

Tertiary education institutions grapple with how to better engage students in their learning in high-enrolment, introductory courses. This paper presents a case study that examines a large-scale, faculty-level course redesign project in which this challenge was addressed through the use of blended learning models. The main research question was:…

A collaboration between geoscience professors and pedagogic and technical support experts at Universidad de los Andes led to a teaching innovation, as part of a project entitled GEOC-SENSE. GEOC-SENSE was based on the use of active pedagogy techniques aided by information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve motivation and acquisition…

This article describes and evaluates an implementation of team-based learning (TBL) in a large (180 student) section of a U.S. government course. The author argues that TBL presents an opportunity for instructors of large classes to increase student engagement with the course content as well as student interaction with the instructor and with each…

There is a tendency for lecture-based instruction in large introductory science courses to strongly focus on the delivery of discipline-specific technical terminology and fundamental concepts, sometimes to the detriment of opportunities for application of learned knowledge in evidence-based critical-thinking activities. We sought to improve…

Engineering students benefit from an active and interactive classroom environment where they can be guided through the problem solving process. Typically faculty members spend class time presenting the technical content required to solve problems, leaving students to apply this knowledge and problem solve on their own at home. There has recently…

Using an action research model, biology faculty examined, implemented, and evaluated learner-centered instructional strategies to reach the goal of increasing the level of student achievement in the introductory biology course BIO 181: Unity of Life I, which was characterized by both high enrollments and a high DFW rate. Outcomes included the…

Students enrolled in a large-lecture, non-majors biology course employing a diversified instructional approach featuring both instructor-centered and student-centered techniques evaluated the effectiveness of each approach in fostering course goals. Students perceived both approaches to be effective to some extent. Students indicated that the…

A large introductory anthropology course at Utah State University was organized to promote collaboration among and between students and faculty. Students were divided into and worked in "clans" for the entire term. A study of the course suggests that learning and a sense of community resulted directly from this organization. (MSE)

The article presents the successful experience of teaching the basic International Business (IB) undergraduate class, in an interactive way and in classes of more than 200 students. The approach follows modified routines taught in AACSB workshops for much smaller audiences and capitalizes on 5-member student teams. The format has been used for…