Introductory psychology students need supports to read and think in a discipline-specific way when learning psychology theories. We tested the effectiveness of using a task-model steps chart to help students understand, evaluate, and use theories presented in their introductory psychology textbook and lecture videos. We randomly assigned 52…

Opportunity and learning gaps between upper-middle-class students and lower SES students that impact academic performance and social development are widening. The purpose of this Action Research study was to understand the interests of students, as well as the academic support most needed, to cultivate the development of 21st century skills and…

In the United States, there is a demand for registered nurses. To be admitted into the nursing program, students need to complete prerequisite courses such as human anatomy and physiology. Many students find human anatomy and physiology challenging due to the nature of the content. Poor performance in human anatomy and physiology can preclude a…

Literature circles are student-led, small-group discussions that promote active learning and engagement with literary texts. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of literature circles on student engagement and learning outcomes in a pedology course. For various reading assignments throughout the semester, students either…

Most courses are taught almost exclusively using lecture and, despite gaps in textbook coverage of empirical economics, do not incorporate academic readings. The authors of this article present a "jigsaw literature review" cooperative learning activity to address these shortfalls. The jigsaw guides students through formulating a position…

Complex thinking is a desired competency in 21st-century university students, so technology-based teaching and learning strategies must be carefully considered when training them in complex reasoning skills. This systematic review aims to map research on the use of teaching and learning strategies supported by technology to enhance complex…

We explored the effectiveness of a flipped active learning pedagogy in a liberal arts mathematics course without video or interactive preparation. In both control and active learning classes, students were required to respond to a reading before class and take a quiz after class. During the active learning class, students worked together in groups…

Hoping to increase student engagement, the author decided to re-envision his course on contemporary global issues in a "flipped" format. The results proved encouraging--to a degree. Over the course of five semesters, applying lessons gleaned from the literature, students learned how to read challenging texts outside of class and…

High-structure courses or flipped courses require students to obtain course content before class so that class time can be used for active-learning exercises. While textbooks are used ubiquitously in college biology courses for content dissemination, studies have shown that students frequently do not read their textbooks. To address this issue, we…

In this experiment, students in a large undergraduate biology course were first exposed to the concepts without new technical vocabulary ("jargon") in a pre-class reading assignment. Their learning of the concepts and jargon was compared with that of an equivalent group of students in another section of the same course, whose pre-class…

The author discusses their experiences teaching an upper-division seminar course in a traditional face-to-face setting, and re-designing a "long eighteenth century" survey course for delivery online. The article thus explores spatial strategies in both face-to-face and online courses, and suggests ways in which they can be particularly…

This article presents the Critical Reading Topics approach, a pedagogical method employed to promote deep thinking in a variety of politics courses. Derived from principles articulated in active learning, critical thinking, backward design, and flipped classroom literature, this method utilizes Bloom's Taxonomy as the scaffolding for students to…

Active learning is increasingly promoted within institutions of higher education to assist students develop higher order thinking and link knowledge to meaning. In this paper, the authors evaluate the use of weekly online quizzes based on prescribed preparatory material as a tool to incentivize preparatory reading in order to enable and encourage…

This article evaluates a writing assignment in which students read a non-fiction book that they chose from a list provided by their instructor, identified examples of social psychological phenomena, and fully explained how those examples fit social psychology concepts. This novel twist on a traditional assignment yielded surprisingly robust…

This is an exploratory study about engaging students in mathematics learning both inside and outside of the classroom of an introductory proof course. The author utilized the framework of scholarship of teaching and learning as a guide to ensure the research process was carried out systematically. This study was conducted through one cycle of…