The 'home project' concept, now known as a Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE), has been a cornerstone of School-Based Agricultural Education (SBAE) for 100+ years. This experiential element of SBAE provides students with authentic and relevant experiences to enhance the learning process. While agricultural educators throughout the U.S. agree…

To explore factors that may inform teaching and learning in STEM education, we investigate individual and situational factors influencing students' cooperative versus competitive responses in a classroom, extra-credit problem social dilemma in core biology and engineering courses. We were curious how our competitive academic environment coupled…

Active learning has been shown to improve student learning and engagement in many 4-year institutions; however, large-scale studies on the efficacy of active learning in community colleges are lacking. In this study, we investigate the effects of active learning in a first semester majors' general biology course at a large, suburban community…

In an economy driven by technological innovation and a complex social landscape, schools can no longer count on traditional academic preparation to set children up for success later in life. The types of skills that will enable students to succeed in the 21st century--such as the ability to solve complex problems, transfer knowledge to new…

Although mobile learning using smartphones and applications or apps have the potential to inform and educate individuals in an outdoor environment, users may find that connectivity issues and basic knowledge of outdoor environments, including both physical and emotional, could be limited by what this technology provided. This study provided my…

An innovative system-building initiative known as the STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice (SLECoP) is transforming U.S. STEM education through cross-sector partnerships between schools, afterschool and summer programs, libraries, museums, and businesses, among others. Although logic models exist to describe how SLEs can make positive…

This study investigates whether differences in learning styles exist between students in online and face-to-face (FTF) sections of political science courses taught by three instructors. Some studies suggest that student preferences regarding online or FTF formats are influenced by their preferred modes of learning. Independent learners, for…

This article discusses two multidisciplinary courses created at the Colorado School of Mines that were developed to integrate ethics into the first-year engineering curriculum: "Nature and Human Values" (NHV) and "Innovation and Discovery in Engineering, Arts, and Sciences" (IDEAS). In both NHV and IDEAS, our objectives are to…

This report describes the use of a Learning Progression Framework (LPF) to support the Student Learning Objectives (SLO) process. The report highlights a few common threats we currently see in the SLO process implemented at various states and districts, and offers the LPF as a possible solution for addressing these threats. This report was…

A Colorado district develops a two-year program that gives teacher teams an opportunity to learn how to use digital tools in the classroom. Called the Digital Learning Collaborative, it is built on three things about professional learning: (1) Learning takes time; (2) Learning is a social process; and (3) Learning about technology should be…

In planning educational technology initiatives, the concerns of many stakeholders are typically taken into account, including the concerns of administrators, teachers, parents, and employers. The perspective of students are recognized as valuable, but not often queried or considered. This paper explores the opinions of K-12 students about a…

This qualitative research study examined teacher induction in the military undergraduate education context. The U.S. Air Force Academy relies on approximately 520 military and civilian instructors to educate nearly 4000 future military officers each year. It is imperative to our nation's security that these educators be highly skilled and…

Recognizing the limitations of traditional research assignments, the two authors of this article--one a librarian and one a historian--set out to redesign a history capstone seminar to focus on the research process as much as on the research product: tipping the iceberg to look at what is underneath. The article begins with a brief overview of the…

This paper examines STEM-based informal learning environments for underrepresented students and reports on the aspects of these programs that are beneficial to students. This qualitative study provides a nuanced look into informal learning environments and determines what is unique about these experiences and makes them beneficial for students. We…

This article focuses on how educators could design professional development to empower the learning of individuals to serve the growth of an organization that was all about student success. The leadership team at Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts (MESA) in Thornton, Colorado, responded to this with its version of a teaching and learning…