Learning often improves when active learning techniques are used in place of traditional lectures. For many of these techniques, however, students are expected to apply concepts that they have already grasped. A challenge, therefore, is how to incorporate active learning into the classroom of courses with heavy content, such as molecular-based…

The World Café (TWC), used as an effective conversational tool around the world, shares several tenets with other participatory approaches to learning and development. It has not been critiqued, however, for its insufficient attention to reflexivity, power differentials, and structural inequalities within its process, specifically in relation to…

If we want our teaching to have a major impact on student learning, what are some ideas that can help us do that? Since 1990, the scholars of teaching and learning have been generating a wealth of new ideas about college-level teaching. All of these are good ideas, but which ones have the most potential to have a high impact on student engagement…

Although large classes in and of themselves are pragmatic for universities, they can be challenging for both students and instructors. The purpose of this study was to investigate pedagogical strategies that instructors teaching large classes can utilize to create positive student-instructor interactions to counter these challenges. Both…

Within a Southwestern school system, deficits in early literacy skills exist as is illustrated by kindergarten students not meeting the requirements on the Phonological Awareness and Phonics Inventory (PAPI). To address this deficit in early literacy skills, the school system instituted the use of the Guided Reading Approach (GR); however, it was…

Teachers of students with visual impairments play an integral role in supporting both students with visual impairments and general education teachers so that students can access the curriculum, including science-related topics (Anderson, 2009; Bogner et al., 2011; Wild & Koehler, 2017). Wild and Koehler (2017) identify six responsibilities of…

Teaching middle school mathematics, I have found that classroom dynamics have a profound impact on the quality of mathematical discussion. Wanting to improve classroom discussion in order to better facilitate both small-group and student-driven learning, I started the school year by randomly grouping students every week for their small groups. I…

This paper analyzes the phenomenon that reducing hours of EFL instruction to non-English majors in Chinese universities gets no response. It first depicts the phenomenon, pointing out that this phenomenon differs greatly from people's response to similar events that happened in the past. It then analyzes the complicated underlying factors from…

Academic self-efficacy is the degree to which students believe they are capable of learning or accomplishing an academic task within a specific area of education. High academic self-efficacy has been associated with positive education outcomes such as enhanced learning, motivation, self-determination, and ultimately academic performance. The…

Large class learning is a reality that is not exclusive to the first-year experience at midsized, comprehensive universities; upper-year courses have similarly high enrollment, with many class sizes greater than 200 students. Research into the efficacy and deficiencies of large undergraduate classes has been ongoing for more than 100 years, with…

The informationalized knowledge sharing of MOOCs not only promotes the change of teaching concept and the reform of teaching methodology, but also provides a new opportunity for the teaching resource integration and sharing between different universities. The present study has constructed an e-Portfolio-based model for the application and sharing…

The purpose of this article is to provide a description of contrasting discourse patterns during small-group reading instruction. The authors report on case studies conducted in two 1st-grade classrooms in different school districts in Pennsylvania. Small-group reading instruction was observed over the course of one year in each classroom, and…

This study aimed to evaluate the significance of group supervision to Yogo teachers in Japan, who often deal with work-related problems in isolation. Like school nurses in the United States, the role of the Yogo teacher is to oversee students' health education and management. In this study, eight Yogo teachers, each with a minimum of six years'…

Children have a natural proclivity to teach, help, cooperate, and empathize with others, and these interactions can have positive benefits for children's emotional, social, and cognitive development. This article is about ways music teachers can design peer-assisted music learning activities that will benefit everyone in the class and ultimately…

This paper investigates the characteristics and behaviour of learners on nine Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on the FutureLearn platform in 2014 and 2015. FutureLearn's social constructivist approach, which emphasizes learning through social interaction, makes the focus on forum posting within these MOOCs particularly appropriate. This study…