Research terminology is an under-examined challenge in the teaching of social science research methods and statistics courses. An important problem in research terminology is that many of the common terms have more than one meaning in English, which students often confuse. For example, the words random, pretest, validity, and regression have more…

Numerous studies and United States Department of Education reports indicate that university graduates lack critical thinking and problem solving skills that are needed for success in both the classroom and the modern workplace. Success in the classroom and workplace is a function of many attributes that change with the situation, but the ability…

The flipped, or inverted, classroom has gained popularity in a variety of fields and at a variety of educational levels, from K-12 through higher education. This paper describes the author's positive experience flipping a graduate qualitative research methods classroom. After a review of the current literature on flipped classrooms in higher…

In response to the diverse needs of individual students--their unique abilities, interests, learning styles, and cultural backgrounds--K-12 teachers have been using differentiated instruction, supported by research, for decades. While positive results have been shown in K-12 education, the literature to support differentiated instruction in higher…

In Cell Biology, a sophomore/junior undergraduate-level high-enrollment core course, students areexpected to develop a broad and detailed understanding of the functioning of eukaryotic cells. Forexample, some of the more challenging biological concepts include machinery involved in thereplication and translational processes, protein…

This study highlights how teaching a research methods course to undergraduate students can be a successful endeavor when active learning is the main method of learning and teaching. In this study, the effectiveness of using active learning in the experimental group to achieve the learning outcomes and final product of a freshman-year writing and…

The process toward academic literacy aims at developing academic reading and writing together with higher academic competences of increasing relevance for undergraduate students as future teachers and researchers. Such a process is even more complex in ELT vocational courses where non-English speaking trainees study English as a system while they…

This qualitative study examined the identity of doctoral students in their quest to become scholars. The research question asked: What impact did a Community of Practice have on the doctoral students? The findings illustrated that on the journey the participants struggled to integrate multiple identities and roles. They also refined their…

This article describes a year-long doctoral course on ethnographic case study research in which a communities of practice approach helped non-traditional students manage the challenging identity negotiations of entering a new academic field. Co-taught by faculty in two disciplines--Rhetoric and Composition and Teaching, Learning, and Culture--the…

Concern about the research and writing abilities of undergraduate students led to the development, implementation and enhancement of four sequential writing assignments in an introductory course. These writing assignments--which included a report on an interview of a professional in the field, a research paper on an aspirational career, a research…

Quantitative reasoning and interdisciplinary skills are central to real-world environmental problem solving. Enhancing those skills for students in environmental programs will help them succeed as future environmental professionals. This paper describes an approach that uses an applied geophysical imaging course to enhance quantitative reasoning…

Colleges and universities are beginning to invest in active learning (AL) classrooms in an effort to replace the traditional lecture style pedagogy that is frequently used by many professors in higher education (Eagan et al., 2014). This is a quantitative research study conducted at a medium-sized Midwestern university. Students were given the…

In higher education music instrument teaching, there is a strong tradition of high-level performers being recruited to teach advanced students within the private studio despite the fact these educators often have no training in pedagogy. The studio environment also continues to be dominated by the one-to-one lesson format and the master-apprentice…

The design of assessment in undergraduate history courses, as university populations grow and change, must adapt to meet and serve a range of new pedagogical imperatives and student constituencies in order to ensure both disciplinary integrity and the development of employability skills transferable to work in other fields. In delivering an…

There is a critical need in the United States to understand how to best prepare preservice teachers for effectively teaching the steadily growing number of PK-12 English learners. The study described in this article, situated in a teacher preparation program in a small, private college in a largely monolingual, monocultural area of the…