Serving as a prominent framework for online learning, the Community of Inquiry (CoI), identifies three factors critical to learning in online environments: teaching presence, cognitive presence, and social presence. However, application of the CoI framework to face-to-face classes has not been broadly or systematically explored, despite…

Developing a sense of classroom community is important in promoting course satisfaction and in helping students overcome feelings of disconnectedness, especially in online courses. When considering the various strategies identified as contributing to a sense of classroom community, instructors likely need support in which strategies and technology…

Institutions of higher education are seeking to support more active learning among faculty, and that support includes the creation of active learning spaces to support more student-centered course activities. However, incremental development of these learning spaces leads to a sorting of students between active and passive learning environments.…

Traditionally, education has been largely delivered in an in-person format; however, an increasing number of courses are being delivered entirely online or with a blend of online and in-person components. These formats differ along various dimensions, such as the quantity and quality of interpersonal interactions and connections, which will likely…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused nearly ubiquitous emergency remote teaching in both secondary and post-secondary education. While there has been a plethora of work examining how instructors adjusted classes to incorporate active learning during emergency remote teaching, there has only been minimal work examining how such emergency remote teaching…

Constructive alignment is often promoted as a principle to enhance the quality of learning but the student perspective has often been neglected when exploring its influence on student learning. There is therefore a need to further explore how students' experiences of the different elements of constructive alignment influence the approach to…

Whether by choice or pushed online by Covid, higher education is increasingly happening in digital spaces with digital tools forming a critical part of learning and teaching contexts. While reviews suggest such tools positively influence student engagement, research tends to be generic and more is needed to understand how and why specific tools…

Collaborative learning (CL) is a common teaching strategy in colleges that involves actively working in groups to achieve a goal. Several studies and theories endorse it as contributing to students' achievement, motivation, and higher-order thinking skills. However, these studies are inconsistent in the way they define and operationalize CL. For…

The importance of reflection during learning process is widely recognized. Drawing on the literature, this article presents a study where students were stimulated to reflect during experiential learning, in order to both re- and de- contextualize their knowledge. We describe how different levels of prompted reflection can be related to academic…

One-minute papers allow students to process what they learned during class and improve student performance. However, this activity can become monotonous and takes significantly longer than the name implies. The research described here tests the effectiveness of a briefer, more flexible version of this technique to increase the perceived relevance…

Research shows that active-learning methods (e.g. discussion) are often superior to passive methods (e.g. lecture) with respect to learning outcomes. However, students sometimes report preferring and learning more in lecture-style classes compared to those in which they play an active role. These and related findings suggest students may lack…

Lack of student engagement in online learning is reported as the major challenge contributing to poor academic performance and completion rates. When transforming an in-person undergraduate remote sensing course to online, this study implemented interactive storytelling lecture trailers (ISLTs) as a tool to effect changes in the realms of…

The purpose of this study was to develop a valid, reliable, and brief measure of active learning in college classrooms that is cheap and easy to complete and yields results that faculty can easily use to inform their development as instructors. Initial construct and face validity was achieved by modifying existing instruments and creating a draft…

Many expect upward trends in online college course enrollment to continue. Despite perceived improvements in online pedagogical practice and advantages afforded by virtual platforms, most students and professors still perceive social interaction, engagement, and overall learning to be more challenging online than in person. More than 3 in 10…

Two-stage examinations consist of a first stage in which students work individually as they typically do in examinations (stage 1), followed by a second stage in which they work in groups to complete another examination (stage 2), which typically consists of a subset of the questions from the first examination. Data from two-stage midterm and…