Student engagement is widely recognised as being influential on learning and achievement in higher education. What is less clear is how the knowledge transfers, i.e., the process of engagement by the student with any new forms of teaching demonstrated by the teacher. Aim: To investigate the effect of small group tutors on student engagement in the…

In the spring of 2020, many colleges and universities had to move their classes online due to COVID-19. This move to the virtual environment highlighted a growing problem in higher education, being increase failure rates for online students. This study addressed two research questions: 1) To what extent does the use of short lectures and small…

We compare student learning and perception data from astronomy, physics, and geology courses taught in a traditional classroom with individual desks to the same classes taught in a large auditorium. In a large student sample (1,593 students), there is no clear difference between rooms in measures of failure rates or average final grades. However,…

Tutorials are a common complementary method of achieving student engagement with material covered in lectures, as students achieve deeper understanding by being involved in small group discussions. However, in an attempt to provide students with a taste of everything the industry has to offer, the Centre for Forensic Science at the University of…

One critical element of increasing science literacy is student engagement. In this article, I report on the impacts of changing an introductory environmental science class to move away from standard lecture delivery and increase student engagement in science. The class was designed around small-group activities, inquiry labs, and substantial use…

Within an interteaching context, an alternating treatments design was used to compare the effects of answering versus writing study guide questions on quiz performance in a 10-week methods course in special education. Results indicated quiz performance was not substantially influenced by the type of preparation, but that writing questions led to…