The design and initial implementation of a project-based directed study course in mathematical research and communication is described. The intention of the course is to expose students to the foundation of mathematical research through inquiry-based learning. Students are asked to approach an exercise in topology as though it is an open problem.…

Community mapping can be an important tool for educators who aim to freely allow students to share their own connections and experiences. During community mapping, students identify areas within their own localities that matter to them, and engage in various literacy events centered on those places. Often, classes will study foreign lands and…

The Common Problems Project (CP2) is an interdisciplinary, problem-based pedagogy that was launched in 2015 by four partner colleges in the State University of New York (SUNY) system (Cortland, Oneonta, Oswego, and Plattsburgh). Since its inception, 100 faculty have participated in CP2 and integrated the pedagogy into 134 courses to implement 47…

In this paper, we present an overview of a series of 1-credit applied problem solving courses. The goal of these courses was to help students develop their oral and written communication skills, ability to work as a team, and general problem solving skills through preparation and participation in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) and…

Drawing on challenges I experienced when teaching a political communication course, I designed an upper-level undergraduate course with the objective of developing students' civic competence and democratic engagement. The major class assignment, which is the focal point of this best practices essay, was a four-step collaborative voter mobilization…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the stay-at-home order implemented by the New York State Governor, the introductory undergraduate biology courses were changed to an at-home remote learning modality. To provide conceptual learning and hands-on experience, the second semester introductory biology laboratory course utilised a multi-modal learning…

This project report presents a multidisciplinary Faculty Learning Community model to foster civic engagement in STEM classes. It focused on first-year Chemistry, Math, and Scientific Inquiry courses and incorporated Academic Service Learning in a project to build solar cell phone chargers for a school in Puerto Rico recovering from the effects of…

In 2005, Dale Dougherty and O'Reilly Media founded "Make Magazine," and coined the term Makerspace, which is broadly defined as a community workspace where people come together to solve problems using materials and tools they might otherwise not have access to (Dougherty, 2012). Recently, schools have allocated funding and resources into…

The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Virtual Exchange Project (VEP) emerged as a pedagogically-innovative and low-cost initiative to internationalise the curriculum and create team-taught coursework that links university classes in different countries. A COIL-VEP was formed between Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South…

To enhance students' learning and help them understand the whole picture of the field of inorganic chemistry, an inorganic laboratory technique course was designed that uses scaffolded, inquiry-based lab experiments and project-based learning. The scaffolded, inquiry-based laboratories taught in the first 8 weeks of the course helped students…

We propose a semester-long Bayesian statistics course for undergraduate students with calculus and probability background. We cultivate students' Bayesian thinking with Bayesian methods applied to real data problems. We leverage modern Bayesian computing techniques not only for implementing Bayesian methods, but also to deepen students'…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the challenges academics face today in developing a knowledge-based economy. In response to these challenges, the authors developed a collaborative approach to enhancing the learning experience for engineering management (or industrial engineering) capstone design courses. The…

Educational approaches in structural engineering have focused on classical methods for solving problems with manual calculations through assignments, quizzes, and exams. The use of computational software to apply the learned knowledge has been ignored for decades. This paper describes an educational approach to tackle the lack of applicable…

"Lady Lucy's Quest" (Shires Press) is a story about a feisty young girl in the Middle Ages who wants to become a Knight of the Round Table. The initial reaction of her family, the townspeople, and the knights is, stated simply, "no way." But Lucy perseveres and meets the three challenges of knighthood presented to her, albeit…

A 10 week project in the organic chemistry laboratory provided the opportunity to require students to write four drafts of an introduction. Student understanding of what a good introduction entails was transformed by their fourth draft, as evidenced by higher citation counts and the inclusion of more and better figures, which reveals greater…