Pedagogical research over the past decade has shown that chemistry courses have high failure rates and low accessibility. The implementation of novel active-learning approaches has great potential to offset these trends. Fundamental concepts that serve as "pinch points" are ripe targets for designing innovative, gamified course materials…

In this research we aim to reproduce and extend the positive results about the effect of humor in solving mathematical word problems. We examined whether solving humorous word problems has some effect on either word problems demanding realistic consideration or word problems of the well-known routine type. Fifth- and sixth-grade students (N=1,153)…

In this study university students interpersonal problem solving approaches were investigated in terms of solution focused approach and humor styles. The participants were 773 (542 female and 231 male, between 17-33 years old) university students. To determine the university students' problem solving approaches "Interpersonal Problem Solving…

The focus of this research is on an international distance discussion class carried out in Chinese between university students in Japan, China and Taiwan using videoconferencing. Smiling was used as an interactional index in an analysis of the archival footage of the recordings of the discussion between native speakers (NS) of Chinese and…

Problem solving is a critical skill for engineering students and essential to development of creativity and innovativeness. Essential to such learning is an ease of communication and allowing students to address the issues at hand via the terminology, attitudes, humor and empathy, which is inherent to their frame of mind as novices, without the…

Individuals respond to threats to affiliation and achievement needs through drawing on a repertoire of coping strategies specific to a given situation. Gifted adolescents in college-preparatory high school programs may be faced with novel stressors, and may have unique coping strategies to manage these challenges. The current study considers…

This teaching guide accompanies the film series "Challenge of the Unknown," which focuses on problem solving in the real world. The guide is designed to bridge the gap between the concepts presented in the films and their classroom applications, by answering teachers' questions and needs and providing a variety of possible activities.…