Liberal arts mathematics courses can provide non-majors the opportunity to connect mathematical topics with areas of personal interest. This article describes two end-of-unit writing assignments (on voting and graph theory) that have been structured so that each student is able to synthesize course material in a unique way, while ensuring a…

This interview was recorded in November 2012 in Jonathan Z. Smith's Hyde Park graystone. Professor Smith offers insights into how he thinks about his classroom teaching and his students' learning through descriptions of various assignments and classroom activities he has developed over more than forty years of teaching. The discussion…

Real-life research is incredibly varied. We research cars. We research lawn problems. We research child behavior problems, health issues, possible vacation destinations, and prices to stretch our budgets. No two scenarios are ever alike, and no two health issues should be assumed to be the same. That is reality, and that is a picture of what the…

This study evaluated brief, in-class write-to-learn assignments as a tool for promoting learning and retention in large, introductory psychology courses. A within-subjects (student) design was used with assignment of concepts to write-to-learn and copy (control) conditions counterbalanced across sections for each instructor. Students performed…

For the past nine years, we have been offering an interdisciplinary course for science majors: The Biology and Chemistry of Brewing. This course is primarily laboratory- and inquiry-based; from a total of 24 h of student/instructor contact time, approximately 6 h are devoted to lecture, and the other 18 h are divided between laboratory exercises,…

This article explores how an English teacher, students, and administrators at a public high school in Chicago participated in a multimodal writing project that negotiated the space between hope and critique, ultimately placing the community at the center of the curriculum. This project aims to illuminate how narrative renderings of possibility--or…

The purpose of this single-case study was to evaluate the effects of a peer-tutoring intervention on the text production skills of three third graders with severe learning and speech difficulties. All tutees were initially able to produce only very short stories. During the course of the treatment, higher performing classmates taught them how to…

Human anatomy has usually been taught in a didactic fashion in colleges and universities. However, recent calls from United States governmental agencies have called for the transformation of undergraduate life sciences education to include active learning in the classroom. In addition, high structure courses have been shown to increase student…

Poor student engagement with academic readings has been frequently reported in college classrooms. As an effort to improve college students' reading engagement, researchers have developed a virtual environment in which students take on the role of tutor and teach a virtual tutee, the virtual tutee system (VTS). This research examined the…

Though class participation and group cohesion have shown some potential to promote student performance in conventional classrooms, their efficacy has not yet been demonstrated in an online-class setting. Group cohesion, defined as member attraction to and self-identification with a group, is thought to promote positive interdependence and the…

Experts are more proficient in manipulating and translating between multiple representations (MRs) of a given concept than novices. Studies have shown that instruction using MR can increase student understanding of MR, and one model for MR instruction in chemistry is the chemistry triplet proposed by Johnstone. Concreteness fading theory suggests…

Graduate course assignments that are pragmatic, challenging, scaffold prior learning, and support academic career aspirations can be difficult to create and even more problematic to assess for even the most experienced faculty. This paper presents a class assignment that incorporated a real-world journal reviewing assignment into an elective…

Because students learn from each other as well as lecturers, it is important to create opportunities for collaboration in writing classes. Teachers now benefit from access to plagiarism detectors that can also provide feedback. This exploratory study considers the role of four review types, open and anonymous, involving the students themselves,…

Completing homework assignments is part of students' daily routine. Because this task is embedded within the home environment, parents play an important role in homework-related attitudes and behaviors. Recent findings have demonstrated that effort and cognitive engagement while doing homework are better proximal predictors of positive outcomes…

This study examines the experiences of doctoral students in a qualitative research course that centers culture throughout the research process. Data sources include one-on-one interviews, written documentation of course assignments, research team meetings, and doctoral students' conference proposals and publications examining civic learning and…