A strategic priority for university educators is to ensure graduates have developed a range of transferable skills. An important skill required by employers is the development of digital capabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the move of courses into blended formats which provided an opportunity for educators to redesign their modules to…

The damped harmonic oscillator physics problem is a standard oscillation problem in calculus physics for pre-engineering students in a community college. The use of alternative linear algebra eigenvalue stability method is consistent with the upper engineering courses using control theory. The external force and friction damping would become the…

Building a website allows students to find and evaluate resources, pose and answer scientific questions, and connect class content to real-world problems and possible solutions. Writing explanations for a particular audience, instead of only the teacher, requires students to state concepts clearly, leading to increased comprehension. Finding the…

An upper-division undergraduate polymer chemistry course was developed as a blended/hybrid course. The students met face-to-face once a week for 75 min with all other components being available online. Face-to-face meetings were used for class discussions/problem-based lectures, student presentations, hands-on activities, and examinations. Online…

We developed a protein research project for a one-semester biochemistry lecture class to enhance learning and more effectively train students to understand protein structure and function. During this semester-long process, students select a protein with known structure and then research its structure, sequence, and function. This project…

Earthquakes "have" been in the news of late--from the disastrous 2010 Haitian temblor that killed more than 300,000 people to the March 2011 earthquake and devastating tsunami in Honshu, Japan, to the unexpected August 2011 earthquake in Mineral, Virginia, felt from Alabama to Maine and as far west as Illinois. As expected, these events…

Learning about endangered or threatened species can be an extension of an adaptation or biodiversity lesson. It can also be tied into conversation and what students (and the rest of us) can do to help species in need. Before your students head outdoors, they should be aware of the habitats and species around them. Use the Internet resources…

YouTube Fridays is a teaching tool that devotes the first five minutes of class each Friday to a YouTube video related to the course. Students select the videos, which expand the class's educational content in courses such as thermodynamics and material and energy balances. From assessments of two pilot studies using YouTube Fridays in Chemical…

Group projects are common in undergraduate chemical engineering course. Wikis are a new medium for group projects because they are Webpages that are edited using the same software used to view the Webpage. Advantages include the ability to record changes made by each individual (helpful for grading), ability to continuously monitor progress, and a…

Numerous studies have demonstrated that university students are capable of contributing to sustainable development while improving their academic skills. Unfortunately for many institutions, the expense of sending large cohorts of students on international service learning trips is prohibitive. Yet, students remain enthusiastic and well equipped…

This educator guide is organized into seven chapters: (1) Overview; (2) The Design Challenge; (3) Connections to National Curriculum Standards; (4) Preparing to Teach; (5) Classroom Sessions; (6) Opportunities for Extension; and (7) Teacher Resources. Chapter 1 provides information about Environmental Control and Life Support Systems used on NASA…

The development of inquiry and project-based materials is challenging in many ways, not the least of which is the design of supports for teachers implementing such materials. We report on the design of educative and just-in-time teacher supports for an online project-based unit in ocean science. The teacher supports were visible as tabs on the…

The purpose of this study was to provide recommendations to teachers who are interested in implementing Internet inquiry projects. Four classes of ninth-and tenth-grade honors students (N = 100) participated in an Internet inquiry project in which they were presented with an ecology question that required them to make a decision based on…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 11th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2014), October 25-27, 2014, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) and endorsed by the Japanese Society for Information and Systems in…

Project-based learning (PBL), which is increasingly supported by information technologies (IT), contributes to fostering student-directed scientific inquiry of problems in a real-world setting. This study investigated the integration of PBL in an IT environment into three undergraduate chemistry courses, each including both experimental and…