Near-peer teaching, in which students one or more years removed from a student within the same academic program, is utilized broadly in medical school curricula and increasingly in undergraduate anatomy and physiology courses. While the literature on near-peer teaching suggests that the practice is overwhelmingly positive, it is primarily from…

As part of a Howard Hughes Program for Innovation in Science Education grant at Iowa State University, a series of interdisciplinary graduate teaching assistant learning communities (TALC) were developed. The purpose of these communities was to create an environment to facilitate teaching assistants' pedagogical development and training to enhance…

Based on current theories of multimedia learning, we propose a strategy for learning from animations. Two different experimental studies were conducted in order to evaluate the strategy. In the first study, 22 sixth graders learned from an animation without the strategy while 21 students were encouraged to make use of the proposed strategy during…

Given the emphasis on community engagement in higher education, academic departments need to become more involved in the community. This paper discusses a number of outreach activities undertaken by the chemistry department at Rhodes University, South Africa. The activities range from service learning to community engagement with teachers and…

The development, implementation, and evaluation of a research-based program of laboratory instruction for first-year chemistry students is described. The new approach engages students in interdisciplinary, chemistry-centered research projects during the second semester of their general chemistry course. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

If the purpose of language learning is communication, then improving students' reading comprehension competence becomes an overall goal in language teaching. This paper examines the online resources of reading comprehension tests with non-English major college students, and tackles the problem with the teaching method of integrating web-based…

A group of five graduate students and a faculty mentor used the cultural popularity of forensics to develop a first-year undergraduate seminar. This course fulfilled two main objectives: First, the graduate student instructors developed professionally through a two-year process of creating, instructing, and revising a course. Second, a variety of…

The "Robot Roadshow Program" is designed to increase the interest of elementary school children in technical disciplines, specifically math and science. The program focuses on children from schools categorized as rural or underserved, which often have limited access to advanced technical resources. We developed the program using robots…

Factors that influence the efficiency of laboratory experiences include: size of laboratory group, length of session, discussion, special tools, and applications of knowledge learned. It is suggested that these variables may be altered to insure that students gain from their time spent in the laboratory. (BH)

This report describes the problems related to control of or variety in curriculum in studies of teaching and the procedures used in one phase of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study to control to some extent the curriculum in reading and mathematics. The major focus of the document is the plan for further study of aspects of Experimental…

TEACHERS IN BIOLOGY, ENGLISH, HUMANITIES, MATHEMATICS, PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES AT THE UNIVERSITY AND AT VARIOUS JUNIOR COLLEGES IN FLORIDA TESTED THE VALUE OF ORIENTING COURSES TOWARD STUDENT PARTICIPATION AND AWAY FROM LECTURES. EACH INSTRUCTOR CONDUCTED ONE CONVENTIONAL COURSE AND ONE EXPERIMENTAL, LESS STRUCTURED COURSE COVERING…

FOUR HYPOTHESES WERE CONSIDERED DURING THIS EVALUATION STUDY, NAMELY THAT THE TEACHING OF ARITHMETIC IN GRADES 4, 5, AND 6 BY THE MADISON PROJECT WILL--(1) PRODUCE AS GREAT AN INCREASE IN ACHIEVEMENT AS THE METHOD COMMONLY PRACTICED, (2) PRODUCE A GREATER INCREASE IN ALGEBRAIC APTITUDE, (3) PRODUCE A GREATER INTEREST IN MATHEMATICS, AND (4)…

An experimental Basic Electricity and Electronics course (BE/E) utilizing a lock-step, instructor presentation methodology was developed and evaluated at the Service School Command, Great Lakes. The study, directed toward the training of lower mental group, school nonqualified personnel, investigated comparative data on test performance, attitude,…