Describes a one-month sixth grade class activity with monarch butterflies called Monarch in the Classroom. Students learn about insects, especially the class material butterflies, including their life cycle, eating habits, migration, and how they overwinter. The lesson plan covers sorting animals, focusing on features, analyzing the community for…

Surveys faculty members of the University of Kentucky Community College System about how they use videotape programs in their classroom instruction. Finds that most faculty members use video occasionally for showing visual examples of the topics they are teaching and to stimulate classroom conversation. Indicates a relationship between teaching…

Explores areas of agreement and disagreement in five articles on mathematics and science standards, highlighting active learning, teaching for understanding, and constructivism. The article notes that there is more than one right answer, but disagreement persists over applications, amateur problem solving, and the risk of junk math and science.…

Explains the use of classwide peer tutoring to actively engage all students, including those with disabilities, and to promote mastery, accuracy, and fluency in content learning. Explains the classwide peer-tutoring approach and reviews research on the efficacy of this approach. (DB)

Describes the implementation of a modular approach and some of the active learning strategies it employs, plans for evaluating the effectiveness of this approach, and plans for disseminating it broadly within the undergraduate chemistry community. (DDR)

Reviews perspectives on closed (nonnetworked) multimedia systems, identifies characteristics of meaningful interactions, and outlines some basic considerations for designers of interactive multimedia instruction. Highlights include active learning environments; learner control; feedback; learner response options; adaptability; and engagement and…

Presents a geometry game, tangrams, as an active learning method to engage international teaching assistants in concepts related to effective communication. Asserts that by framing the presentation of research-based communication concepts in an active learning metaphor that compares giving instructions to teaching, learners can experience these…

Explains what being a naturalist means and discusses concerns about biologists who lack an understanding of natural history. Discusses reasons for the decline in the number of naturalists and makes suggestions on how to use natural history as a teaching tool. (Contains 12 references.) (YDS)

Describes the "One-Minute Paper," a teaching strategy used to encourage active learning by students and provide feedback to teachers. Enables the professor to establish a rapport with a large class of students and provides the professor with an insight into student difficulties and perceptions of the lecture material. (JRH)

Describes four approaches to improve students' abilities and inclination to think better: provide classroom learning environments that make thinking possible and students willing to engage in it; make the invisible substance of thinking visible and explicit; support student execution of newly encountered or complex thinking operations during…

The sixth technological revolution, electronic communications, challenges educators with the rapid pace of change, possible displacement of teachers, and the dangers of misapplication. Advantages include more active involvement of students in the learning process, flexibility, and variety. (SK)

Reviews state-of-the-art reports on the discipline of communication published between 1970 and 1999. Claims the discipline of communication can begin self-definition by considering how the discipline is defined by those outside the discipline. Includes the perspective provided by the Federal Government as well as general education programs in…

Developed and constructed by individual teachers, Foxfire is an active, learning-centered approach that defines an interactive relationship among teachers, learners, and curriculum and involves learners in deciding how they will learn, assess what they learn, and apply their knowledge meaningfully. Tenets and implementation steps are discussed.…

Discusses the extent to which the existing literature offers insights into effectively teaching statistical inference. Describes an in-class exercise that helps students understand inferential statistics. Explains that students learn more about concepts such as population distribution, sampling distributions, and standard error of the estimate.…

Describes an approach to incorporate active learning strategies into the first semester of a university-level introductory physics course. Combines cooperative and peer-based methods inside the classroom with project-based learning outside the classroom in an attempt to develop students' transferable skills as well as improving their understanding…