Lesson planning of teachers as a research field has received little attention in terms of modelling and measuring relevant competences. As an innovative measurement approach, we developed a standardised method for analysing written plans of demonstration lessons. Our focus is on the demand of pedagogical adaptivity, i.e., the ways in which lesson…

Due to limited exposure to the reflective genre, students experience cognitive, psychological and linguistic issues that prevent them from producing proficient reflective pieces. This study investigated how these issues could be addressed through modelling, the 6 + 1 traits writing rubric and blended learning. The study reports on the experiences…

A growing body of literature focused on the pedagogical relationship between information literacy (IL) and metacognition suggests that facilitating learners' reflections promotes IL learning. However, activating and assessing this relationship is difficult. This article describes a constructivist activity that models for students how to practice…

This paper describes the process of constructive alignment of the content and assessment of a first year university course on Digital Culture. Previous iterations of the course assessed the students using only written assignments, which proved to be problematic. In 2019 the course team decided to revise the assessment tasks in order to align them…

In this article, Jaehan Bae describes one of the assignments he created for an art methods course for education majors (preK-8). In it, Bae asked preservice teachers to research the food as well as other aspects of a culture of their choice. Through this assignment, he hoped the preservice teachers would "explore art and the world through…

This article investigates the civic writing practices of more than 11,000 students writing letters to the next president in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. election. We analyze how letter topics are associated with socioeconomic factors and reveal that 43 topics--including ones prevalent among students such as immigration, guns, and school…

The purpose of this study was to examine perceptions of the influence of a student-authored case study, completed in a teacher preparation special education reading course, on inservice teachers' current reading instruction. Study participants reported that completing the case study as a teacher candidate did impact current reading instructional…

Many well-intended instructors use Socratic or leveled questioning to facilitate the discussion of an assigned reading. While this engages a few students, most can opt to remain silent. The seven step strategy described in this article provides an alternative to classroom silence and engages all students. Students discuss a single reading as they…

Creativity is more important than ever in today's knowledge-based economy. Although many students doubt their own creativity, very few exercises are designed to help them access this ability. We believe that self-expression and self-reflection are important for understanding personal creative ability. Jung introduced the mandala to promote these…

We often assume that students will simply understand specific ethical requirements as they progress, but in reality this does not happen. Students need instruction in ethics. With adherence to the TriCouncil's ethics policy now mandatory for university research with human participants, understanding of ethics is a necessity. We need students to be…

Two studies (Trautwein 2007 and Dettmers et al. 2010) show a positive correlation between high-quality homework and mathematics achievement. Students who completed their homework assignments scored better on assessments. However, these studies also showed no relationship between time spent on homework and resulting student achievement. This helped…

Internships are among the most beneficial out-of-classroom experiences designated as High-Impact Practices (HIPs). Yet, due to the diverse and unscripted nature of internship experiences, as well as the many different models for facilitating them, outcomes assessment practices are a long way from capturing the full power of internships as learning…

Conducting primary research through digital video (DV) can allow students to experience meaning-making firsthand, gaining empathy and understanding for their subjects. Two practical reasons for encouraging students to use DV are that students are already using the technology outside of school and that the digital culture demands digital literacy.…

This follow-up report provides a revised Literacy Assignment Analysis Framework that incorporates discussion and teacher scaffolding. This new framework serves as a guidepost for studying sets of assignments across multiple days or weeks within a single classroom, school, or district. A closer look at more assignments from real classrooms provides…

This paper presents a sample assignment to be administered after the first two weeks of an introductory business focused statistics course in order to promote student buy-in. This assignment integrates graphical displays of data, descriptive statistics and cross-tabulation analysis through the lens of a marketing analysis study. A marketing sample…