Incorporating civic engagement in the undergraduate curriculum has become a goal in higher education generally and the communication discipline specifically. Given this emerging priority, we offer a framework that integrates civic engagement in the communication classroom and meets students and instructors needs, experience, and goals. Drawing on…

As most GenZ and Millenial students now study at home, young people have shifted their media content consumption, with streaming platforms being among GenZ and Millenials favorites since the first lockdown. Could 'Netflix and chill' be turned into a creative learning activity for design students? As theoretical online learning is often associated…

This paper explores the course design and implementation of a first-year discovery seminar on "Living in the Metaverse" offered at a business university. Integrated with standardized college-readiness topics, the course combines hands-on activities with collaborative assignments and class discussions to present a multidisciplinary…

This paper describes a unit designed to promote the development of narrative writing skills among 5th grade students through the use of LEGO robotics. Over the course of four, two and one-half hour sessions (one day per week for four consecutive weeks), the students learned how to construct and program robots, write and present a proposal to…

Teachers strive to design instruction that actively engages all students, but a few "back-benchers" often seem to be left out, due to academic struggles, English language skills, personal disinterest, or other factors. Teachers seek to help these students develop into "active and engaged participants" in their classrooms in…

This essay looks primarily at one approach to teaching about privilege in a feminist research course. I talk about the motivation to ask students to participate in this exercise and the potential as well as the challenges it has for raising awareness of one's own privileges before setting out to do feminist research. Additionally, the paper…

Values clarification is a dynamic process in which people come to understand what they individually view as important in their lives by placing a name or label to what one values. This process commonly occurs during the traditional college years and is a critical component of leadership education. This qualitative study examined how junior-level…

Learning communities can strengthen early undergraduates' learning, but planning them can be daunting for instructors. Learning communities usually rely on integrative assignments that encourage interdisciplinary analysis. This article reports on our experiences using microloans as an interdisciplinary assignment in a learning community that…

Developed at the University of British Columbia (UBC), UBC Mix creates interdisciplinary learning experiences for students by developing partnerships between existing courses, and between existing courses and other learning opportunities. UBC Mix connects faculty members interested in making their courses more interdisciplinary, and facilitates…

In this article we describe current educational research underlying a comprehensive model for building a scientific classroom discourse community. We offer a professional development activity for a school-based professional learning community, providing specific science instructional strategies within this interactive teaching model. This design…

The ubiquitousness of images in the digital era highlights the importance of individuals' visual communication skills in the 21st Century. We conducted a literature review of visual literacy initiatives in academic institutions to illustrate best practices for imparting these skills in students. The literature review identified five categories of…

Literacy remains an area of concern in early secondary education in Scotland (ages 12-14), with recent research suggesting a continued decline in attainment levels. As literacy underpins learning, interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to teaching literacy are now being emphasized through the new Curriculum for Excellence that aims to…

Pairing an inquiry lesson with a traditional reading activity creates a jarring philosophical mismatch between the interaction, deep thinking, and scientific reasoning that drives meaningful inquiry instruction and the "scan the text, copy the answers" response often obtained from elementary nonfiction readers. Realizing that there must be a…

This article describes the Dim Sum and Chinese Restaurant Project undertaken by 6-year-old kindergarten children in Hong Kong. The article discusses the importance of listening, observing, and documenting children's actions to meet their needs and interests. The kindergarten program that participated in this project is a nonprofit kindergarten…

This newsletter of best practices in implementing the High Schools That Work (HSTW), Making Middle Grades Work (MMGW) and Technology Centers That Work (TCTW) school improvement models is based on presentations at the 27th Annual HSTW Staff Development Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the summer of 2013. The newsletter is divided up into…