Organismal biology (OrgBio) comprises the diversity, structures, and functions of all organisms from bacteria to humans. Arguably, OrgBio is often the most poorly taught and least conceptually rigorous section of the introductory biology sequence offered at most U.S. institutions of higher education. This article reports on the successful…

Worked examples can help novice learners develop early schemata from an expert's solution to a problem. Nonetheless, the worked examples themselves are no guarantee that students will explore these experts' solutions effectively. This study explores two different approaches to supporting engineering technology students' learning in an…

An introductory phonetics course provides foundational content for future clinical practice and may serve as a student's first experience within the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders. The Students as Partners framework (Cook-Sather et al., 2014) offers a model for valuing student assets and experiences in co-creating learning materials…

Students often experience science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses as competitive, weed-out spaces. Learning Assistants (LAs) have potential to improve students' experiences in these courses. Previously, we elucidated themes describing the impact of LAs on students' sense of STEM belonging and science-related confidence in…

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a student-centered teaching technique that promotes engagement through higher-order thinking, collaboration, and creativity. This study examines the impact of IBL levels on students' interest, motivation, and engagement. Three levels of IBL (traditional, structured, and guided) were implemented in an introductory…

Purpose: Online resources can be helpful for students and can augment the content presented in learning environments. A team consisting of four biologists, a graduate student, instructional designer and media developers collaborated on the design, development and evaluation of first-year biology online tutorials in a Canadian University. The…

This article describes one approach to flipping an introductory sociology course. To encourage students to practice 'doing' sociology, we designed a flipped classroom that included a 'pay to play' model, small group work and an emphasis on active learning during class time. With this course design, we linked in-class active learning with outside…

In general, engineering students show little interest in the activities inherent in statistics subjects. This claim may be partly explained by the competition with other subjects in the first years of undergraduate courses, or by student perceived low attractiveness of the classes. In this context, several studies indicated that methodologies…

As undergraduates' academic distress continues to rise, it is important to consider factors related to classroom anxiety. This study investigated how student anxiety varied by preferred seating location and whether the reasons for their preferred seating location were related to these anxiety levels. In seven introductory biology classes at a…

Active-learning pedagogical practices are encouraged in the education literature to improve academic outcomes. The research reported in this paper explored the effect of real-time interactive polling--a type of active learning--on three measures of academic outcome: final marks, student engagement, and failure probability. To provide credible…

To support student construction of knowledge during class meetings, there is a growing demand to incorporate active learning practices. However, 'active learning' can range from occasionally voting on a multiple-choice question, to spending all of class time on worksheets. Consequently, the outcomes of active learning course reforms vary widely.…

Applied geography represents the dialectic relationship between theory and application (Pacione 1999, 2004). A well-informed rigorous pedagogy must represent this dialectical relationship (Pacione 1999). How then can the relationship between the theoretical and the applied be challenged within the "spaces" of the university? I provide a…

Protein translation is a fundamental biological process taught in introductory general biology classes at the undergraduate level. This core scientific topic is often hard for students to understand as it involves several key players and piecing together of information learned in multiple lectures. The current study examines the effectiveness of…

As the awareness, benefits, and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) in various fields have increased, so have efforts to conduct research on its impact on students learning behaviors, experience, and engagement. However, limited research has been conducted regarding the efficacy of using OER on students' perceived enjoyment in learning…

In the modern American politics classroom, ideological and partisan conflict have the capacity to interfere with a healthy classroom environment. This problem is increasingly apparent when students engage questions at the heart of U.S. Constitutional design. By asking students to inhabit fictional roles with preferences and attitudes that may…