Art teachers are always looking for new ways to bring reading opportunities into the classroom--without just reading chapters in a textbook. This assignment helps broaden the knowledge of students in areas that teachers may not have time to explore during art classes. It also gives students something to work on if they have finished their project.…

Parson's programming puzzles are a family of code construction assignments where lines of code are given, and the task is to form the solution by sorting and possibly selecting the correct code lines. We introduce a novel family of Parson's puzzles where the lines of code need to be sorted in two dimensions. The vertical dimension is used to order…

A simple Internet search of "academic dishonesty" reveals a continuing conversation among individuals within the academic community who are asking what academic dishonesty is, who is cheating, why students are cheating, and how we stop them from cheating. This article addresses these questions and provides a model for creating a culture of trust…

This study attends to the possibilities of analyzing students' writings at a lexicogrammatical level in terms of their use of linguistic resources, and the insights afforded by this approach into the challenges students faced when they employed the language of school science related to the phenomenon of expansion. For the purpose of this study,…

People tend to think that inventions must be complex and sophisticated. Yet, some of the most useful inventions have been simple, or elegant, like Velcro, zippers, and Post-it[R] notes. Kitchen utensil drawers are filled with all sorts of great inventions, and in this article, the author discusses a challenge that allows students to develop their…

We describe the modifications to an instrumental analysis course which incorporated the link between science and public policy. This course combines classroom lectures, project based labs, and a writing assignment. The project based labs have a focus on health and environmental issues directly involving the local community, while the writing…

Using Dutch data on pupils in elementary school this paper is the first empirical study to analyze whether assigning homework has a heterogeneous impact on pupil achievement. Addressing potential biases by using a difference-in-difference approach, I find that the test score gap is larger in classes where everybody gets homework than in classes…

Since education reform efforts have long focused on reading and mathematics, the social studies classroom has been a target of remedial services--with children being removed from social studies to gain additional support in reading and math. As a result, many children spend years in school with little to no exposure to the social studies, despite…

The authors used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate the use of Turnitin originality detection software in a graduate social work course. Qualitative analysis of student responses revealed positive and negative spent completing assignments, and the tone of the class. Quantitative analysis of students' originality scores indicated a short-term…

Much of second language (L2) class time, particularly in school and university classes, is devoted to the teaching of writing, and written assignments form an important component of assessed work. We assume that learners' L2 writing develops over time, in response to instruction, feedback, and practice. However, to date there has been very little…

This research tested and evaluated how one method--Competency Points (CPs)--increased student success by enhancing engagement and motivation in community college English composition students. In 2005 I introduced Competency Points in my English Composition 1 classes, and began tracking how engaged and motivated students were to succeed as revealed…

Course management software (CMS) allows teachers to deliver content electronically and manage collaborative coursework, either blending with face-to-face interactions or as the core of an entirely virtual classroom environment. CMS often takes the form of an electronic storehouse of course materials with which students can interact, a virtual…

The purpose of this research was to investigate how the use of blogging in the language arts classroom influences student communication about independent reading novels. I was motivated to do this study by witnessing the enthusiasm with which my students discussed technology as well as their eagerness to use those resources to create…

This paper describes a one-year introductory robotics course sequence focusing on computational aspects of robotics for third- and fourth-year students. The key challenges this curriculum addresses are "scalability," i.e., how to teach a robotics class with a limited amount of hardware to a large audience, "student assessment,"…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of blogging and portfolio keeping on a group of pre-service teachers' writing skill in a compulsory writing course at a tertiary level English language teaching (ELT) programme in Turkey. The study specifically looked into to what extent receiving feedback from course instructor and peers…