This article presents an activity which makes use of Don McLean's song "American Pie," to engage students in fantasy-theme analysis. This discussion ultimately demonstrates how reality is constructed to satisfy the views shared by groups and individuals. Fantasy-theme analysis argues that audiences frequently shape their own connotation of an…

This study reports middle school astronomy classes that implemented photographs and classroom response systems (CRSs) in a discussion-oriented pedagogy with a curriculum unit for the topics of "day-night" and "cause of seasons." In the new pedagogy, a teacher presented conceptual questions with photographs, her 6th grade…

This paper reports on data collected via an audience response system, where a convenience sample of 300 adults aged 17-50 pressed a button to register their answers for twenty multiple choice questions. The responses were then discussed with the respondents at the time. The original dataset includes physics, biology and chemistry questions. The…

Common Core education standards establish a clear set of specific ideas and skills that all students should be able to comprehend at each grade level. In an effort to meet these standards, educators are turning to technology for improved learning outcomes. "Cases on Technology Integration in Mathematics Education" provides a compilation…

This article investigates the impact of an audience response system (ARS) on student engagement in undergraduate university courses. A survey was administered to students in a dozen courses piloting the ARS system. On 13 out of 14 measures the majority of students thought the system was helpful. Overall, students were more positive about the use…

Forum theater is an interactive theater method in which audience members become active performers, taking advantage of the opportunity to explore multicultural dimensions of teaching in a "safe space" and receiving feedback from colleagues. Forum theater methods derive from Theater of the Oppressed, an interactive approach founded by the Brazilian…

Multiethnic children's literature addresses multiple audiences, providing different reading experiences and benefits for each. Using critical race theory as an interpretive tool, this article examines how two African American historical fiction novels, Mildred Taylor's "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" and Christopher Paul Curtis's "The Watsons Go to…

The way teachers shape and handle their own feelings and those of their learners is central to the success of learning. Now in its second edition, "Teaching with Emotional Intelligence" shows how to manage this influential yet neglected area of learning and teaching. This practical book looks at how lecturers and teachers can develop and use their…

Case study teaching had a long tradition in law and business before it made the jump to medical school education in the form of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in the 1970s. Today, both the University of Delaware's Clearinghouse and the University of Buffalo's National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (NCCSTS) have hundreds of cases and…

Classroom response systems (clickers) are used in many courses at the University of Toronto (U of T), primarily to introduce interactive pedagogy and to engage students in lecture courses. We examined the use of clickers in various courses at U of T and interviewed over 30 instructors about their use of clickers in classes with a total enrolment…

What do actors have in common with bigots, bullies and their victims? They play the same script over and over. This article discusses how social justice theater can teach students to take the story into their own hands. It describes Forum Theater, a dramatic method that sets up tightly scripted dramas of power and difference, then encourages the…

Students in three sections of introductory psychology, N = 1051, were asked about the utility of traditional, e.g. instructor, lectures and textbook, and nontraditional, e.g., clickers, podcasts and online lecture slides, teaching tools. Students who felt unprepared for college (25.9%) differed from their peers in their perceived utility of these…

This paper describes an exploratory study investigating the impact of problem-based learning and clicker technology as active learning strategies at the American University of Sharjah Library, United Arab Emirates (UAE). Studies compared traditional and active learning classes. The present article maps the successes and challenges of these unique…

The use of electronic audience response systems in university teaching is currently increasing rapidly. This paper describes how a consistent use of peer instruction facilitated by an audience response system has been introduced in an introductory engineering dynamics course. Data are presented that reveal that this teaching style leads to an…

What effects do different setups of museum exhibits have on visitors' conversations and interactions? The study reported here is an investigation of the role that labels and associated materials play in visitors' conversations and interactions at a heat camera exhibit. After we introduced a label to help visitors explore the insulating properties…