The goal of this laboratory exercise is to increase student understanding of the impact of nervous system function at both the organismal and cellular levels. This inquiry-based exercise is designed for an undergraduate course examining principles of cell biology. After observing the movement of "Caenorhabditis elegans" with defects in their…

At the 102nd annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) in Salt Lake City, Utah, members of the Genome Consortium for Active Teaching and faculty from around the world gathered to discuss educational genomics. The focus of the gathering was a series of presentations by faculty who have successfully incorporated genomics and…

Membrane transport is a fundamental concept that undergraduate students of cell biology understand better with laboratory experience. Formal teaching exercises commonly used to illustrate this concept are unbiological, qualitative, or intricate and time consuming to prepare. We have developed an exercise that uses uptake of radiolabeled nutrient…

A 14-week, undergraduate-level Genetics and Population Biology course at Morgan State University was modified to include a demonstration of functional genomics in the research laboratory. Students performed a rudimentary sequence analysis of the "Caenorhabditis elegans" genome and further characterized three sequences that were predicted to encode…

West Liberty State College (WLSC) is a baccalaureate-general state college situated on 290 acres in the village of West Liberty, West Virginia. In the fall 2002 semester, the College reported an enrollment of 2,571 students. The College contains four academic units: the School of Business Administration, the School of Education, the School of…

Background and Objectives: At McMaster University, the birthplace of problem-based learning (PBL), administrators and curriculum planners have begun the process of renewing the undergraduate MD curriculum. One step has been to conduct an environmental scan that includes input from medical residents. Methods: Individual interviews with 17 medical…

Successfully integrating computers into colleges and universities continues to be a significant challenge. This article describes an undergraduate Mobile Computing Program at Seton Hall University, a private Catholic university in New Jersey, covering the period of Fall 1998 through Spring 2000, with survey analysis being completed in 2001.…

In this article, the author discusses the importance of physical education teachers' link to their past and to their sense of connection with their professional family, National Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (NAPEHE). She relates how she traces her physical lineage directly back to Amy Morris Homans through her…

A laboratory experiment is presented for the upper-level undergraduate physical chemistry curriculum in which the ternary phase diagram of water, 1-propanol and n-heptane is measured using proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The experiment builds upon basic concepts of NMR spectral analysis, typically taught in the undergraduate…

Most college students and parents want higher education to marry two lifelong goals: pursuit of what one loves and financial security. They know the subtext: college is an investment, and the higher the education level one achieves, the higher one's potential income for life. So what about the education of artists? Most art departments and…

This paper presents the results of a case study investigating the extent to which information literacy is integrated into student learning in an undergraduate Management degree at Queen's University Belfast. The first part of the paper focuses on how information literacy was embedded in two modules delivered by the author. An analysis of assessed…

Universities in Australia have been using the course experience questionnaire (CEQ) for a number of years to measure the quality of teaching. Recently, there have been increasing calls for a broader perspective that takes into account the potential of non-classroom context influences on the student learning experience. This project undertook to…

Assessment of geography undergraduate programs, which incorporate external reviews and concomitant departmental self-studies, attempt to assure pedagogical excellence within uncompromising commitments to successful student learning outcomes, currency of the knowledge and skills imparted, and continuous programmatic improvement. Programmatic…

Many studies show students benefit from working cooperatively. Rarely published in STEM literature are guidelines to help educators effectively incorporate research teams in the classroom. We explain how to create a positive learning experience by explaining group dynamics, and by using group contracts and team-building activities. We also share…

Results compiled from several studies indicate that college students place significant personal emphasis on matters related to spirituality. Compiling students' responses from the author's 2003 pilot study, subsequent focus group interviews, and the 2004 national survey, along with faculty's responses from the 2004-2005 Higher Education Research…