A defining feature of honors education is meaningful engagement within and across disciplines, yet significant challenges for creating and sustaining meaningful transdisciplinary research remain. One such challenge involves a nuanced understanding of a discipline, or what educational researchers call "disciplinary literacy." This article…

Geographic technologies and perspectives are important for understanding health issues because places and locations influence human health and diseases. Despite the increasing use of a geographic information system (GIS) in health research, and the explosion of new and emerging technologies, little is known about their potential as educational…

This article presents an in-class exercise that teaches students how to call elected officials about a course-related issue of their choice. The goals are to connect classroom learning with real-life action, to show that contacting elected officials need not be difficult or intimidating, and to help students develop a sense of efficacy that can…

This paper explores students' perceptions of an experimental, cross-cultural entrepreneurial blended learning course. This course, developed jointly by North Carolina State University and Josip Juraj Strossmayer University, Croatia, employed a variety of face-to-face and technology-based approaches to facilitate cross-cultural teaching. The impact…

An important goal in the design and development of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) is to have a system that adaptively reacts to students' behavior in the short term and effectively improves their learning performance in the long term. Inducing effective pedagogical strategies that accomplish this goal is an essential challenge. To address…

Within the teaching of political theory, an assumption is emerging that "Reacting to the Past" simulations are an effective tool because they encourage greater student engagement with ideas and history. While previous studies have assessed the advantages of simulations in other political science subfields or offered anecdotal evidence of…

The ability to interpret and reason from Tree of Life diagrams is a key component of twenty-first century science literacy. This article reports on the authors' continued development of a multifaceted research-based curriculum--including an instructional booklet, lectures, laboratories and a field activity--to teach such tree thinking to biology…

A graduate-level course focused on original research proposals is introduced to address the uneven preparation in technical writing of new chemistry graduate students. This course focuses on writing original research proposals. The general course structure features extensive group discussions, small-group activities, and regular in-class…

Interdisciplinary teaching has been advocated as a means to foster cooperation between traditionally separate fields and broaden students' perspectives in the classroom. We explored the pedagogical difficulties of interdisciplinary team teaching through a first-year seminar in magic, religion, and the origins of science. Although many accounts in…

The responsibility for college success has historically rested with the student, but since the 1980s, educators have taken increasing ownership of this, designing structures that increase the likelihood of learning, success, and retention. These efforts have included a variety of initiatives--first year seminars, learning communities,…

The number of candidates seeking and completing online courses and programs in teacher education continues to increase in order to meet the licensing flexibility demands of adults pursuing teacher certification. Using the theoretical constructs of learner-centered instruction and zones of proximal development, this paper provides an overview of…

Animal cell culture is a core laboratory technique in many molecular biology, developmental biology, and biotechnology laboratories. Cell culture is a relatively old technique that has been sparingly taught at the undergraduate level. The traditional methodology for acquiring cell culture training has been through trial and error, instruction when…

North Carolina revised its "Standard Course of Study" in 1985 to reflect the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function in an industrial age. The entrance into what is being called the information age brings new challenges in preparing students with new skills in the areas of creative thinking, problem solving, interpersonal…

Describes three English courses for one-year vocational students whereby oral communication is the basis for teaching reading, grammar, and composition. (HOD)

After the passage of the North Carolina Elementary and Secondary School Reform Act of 1984, curriculum revision began. This handbook provides a detailed and integrated basic course of study for the revised curriculum in mathematics for grades K-12. The philosophy and rationale for the entire curriculum are first discussed, followed by sections on…