Three American Indian college graduates describe how they benefitted from the "INROADS to the Stars Scholarship" program. A multi-year scholarship and summer internship program, INROADS places talented minority group students in internships with global corporations and provides leadership training. Students must major in geophysics,…

Summarizes the views of a sample of primary and high school teachers on the application of gene technology to human medicine. In general, high school teachers are more positive about these developments than primary teachers, and both groups of teachers are more positive than interested lay publics. Highlights ways in which this topic can be…

This article presents evidence that maths diagnostic assessments, consequent individualized learning programmes and face-to-face maths study support can combine to significantly increase maths related module pass rates and scores for undergraduate engineering students. It is argued that simply having a quiet, relaxed, supported study area,…

Student evaluation of instruction in college and university courses has been a routine and mandatory part of undergraduate and graduate education for some time. A major shortcoming of the process is that it often relies exclusively on the opinions or qualitative judgments of students rather than the learning or transfer of knowledge that takes…

There is a growing demand for admissions tutors in UK universities to use more rigorous and systematic decision-making methods in recruitment processes. A key barrier to achieving this goal is the lack of a coherent and definitive body of knowledge upon which such methods can be built. The yardstick used for the majority of applicants is A2-level…

The Project-Based Learning (PBL) approach enables the student to construct knowledge in his/her own way. Piaget, the founder of constructivism, saw the development of intelligence as a process involving the relationship between brain maturity and individual experience. The technology PBL (TPBL) approach confronts the student with a personal…

The Virtual Grand Tour (VGT) is a paradigm for integrating a presentation of an overview of a larger subject with the possibility of launching at any time an exploratory study of a given sub-topic. The name derives from the paradigm's emulation of those 18th-century travels intended to educate (especially) young, affluent British men; today, with…

The Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) is immersed in an educational system mainly based on master classes, and although graduates benefit from a good preparation, there is an appreciable rate of failure among the students. The UPV is aware of the restructuring requirements of the current system and consequently, and in accordance with the…

Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) are established to promote teaching excellence. While CTLs are effective at fostering teaching excellence in the main, they have provided little attention to addressing potentially unique needs of STEM faculty. This article proffers explanations as to why CTLs do not focus on promoting STEM pedagogies and…

The role tradition played in preindustrial societies has been supplanted by the decisions of countless specialists organized by means of an intellectual and professional division of labor shaping a knowledge infrastructure that sustains these decisions. Three limitations of this knowledge system are discussed: (a) on the macrolevel, it imposes an…

The Unit Operations Laboratory offers 2 courses in unit operations. One is a 2-semester course for chemistry and food engineering students that is more demanding because it considers more unit operations and places more emphasis on solving exercises. The other is a 1-semester course for chemistry and pharmacy students that considers fewer unit…

Purpose: To expose engineering students to using modern technologies, such as multimedia packages, to learn, visualize and solve engineering problems, such as in mechanics dynamics. Design/methodology/approach: A multimedia problem-solving prototype package is developed to help students solve an engineering problem in a step-by-step approach. A…

The key to agricultural development in the eastern region of India, where problems of excess water and water scarcity coexist, is the scientific management of water resources with the adoption of recommended water-management technologies. A vast networking of infrastructure for the development and dissemination of water-management technologies…

The BSc in computer aided product design (CAPD) course at the University of Wolverhampton was conceived as a collaborative venture in 1989 between the School of Engineering and the School of Art and Design. The award was at the forefront of forging interdisciplinary collaboration at undergraduate level in the field of product design. It has…

A peer tutoring scheme has been introduced into the Department of Engineering at the University of Liverpool to help 2nd year undergraduate students tackle conceptual design problems. Conceptual design is an iterative process consisting of a series of generative and evaluative stages, which gradually converge on a preferred conceptual solution.…