Faced with doing research, students are often hesitant. Most graduate students have never conducted extensive research, having few qualifications or little technical skills. This article focuses on helping students acquire research interests, understanding and skills by using an experiential research group model. The purpose of this article is to…

While learning about the types of weather events that occur in the local area, students in grades 4-6 were asked to consider how structures can be built to withstand extreme weather conditions. Teams of students designed, constructed, and tested buildings to withstand hurricanes and designed the tests they would use to evaluate their structures.…

"NSDC Policy Points" is a newsletter published by the National Staff Development Council (NSDC). This issue of "NSDC Policy Points" discusses why collaborative learning is critical to professional development. Included in this newsletter is an article about team learning in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. [For Volume 1, Number 3 of…

Creative and critical thinking have been identified by Isaksen, Dorval, and Treffinger (2000) as the ability to "perceive gaps, challenges, or concerns; think of many varied or unusual possibilities; or elaborate and extend alternatives," as well as make meaningful connections that include analyzing, evaluating, and developing options.…

From June 2004 through January of 2005, the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta hosted the traveling exhibit, "The Genomic Revolution," described as the most comprehensive presentation on the complex subject of genomics. Originally created by the American Museum of Natural History, this exhibit presented cutting edge…

Undergraduate students are generally unfamiliar with scientific literature. Further, students experience frustration when they read research articles the way they read textbooks, from beginning to end. Using a team-based active learning exercise, an instruction librarian and colleagues at University of Texas at Austin introduce nutritional…

In the January-February 2009 issue of "Academe," Jennifer I. Friend and Juan Carlos Gonzales suggested that first-year tenure-track faculty "form a writing group," but they described a process of merely helping each other on individual projects instead of writing a common piece together. In this article, the authors suggest that faculty should…

This article reports that young inventors at a Maryland high school are not only learning scientific principles, but also teamwork and the tenets of patent law. Twice a week, 10 members of the Clarksburg High School's Coyote Inventors Club gather in a second-floor computer lab to peck away at building a deceptively simple device: a cable that…

This database project focuses on learning through knowledge integration; i.e., sharing and applying specialized (database) knowledge within a group, and combining it with other business knowledge to create new knowledge. Specifically, the Tiny Tots, Inc. project described below requires students to design, build, and instantiate a database system…

One way to bring concepts to life in an introductory data networks course is for students to physically build a network that addresses a real business problem. However it can be challenging to find a suitable business problem, particularly if the network can exist only during the class period. This case presents a realistic business scenario and…

In an effort to find a feasible way to provide quality interdisciplinary teaching on a small campus, Southern Vermont College has introduced a program called Roving Professors. The Rovers, a select group of professors, visit multiple classes across the college's five divisions, and each one integrates his or her specialty into each course visited,…

This article describes the impact of a MAPS process on team member agreement on postsecondary expectations and goals for a middle school student with Autism Spectrum Disorders in a rural area. The results revealed similarities and differences in the beliefs and expectations of the participants on the transition team and that the MAPS approach…

This study is a continuation of previous work by the authors. Most of the NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement) scales are positively related to higher Business ETS MFT (Major Field Test) scores. The NSSE scales are Active and Collaborative Learning, Enriching Educational Experiences and Integration of Diversity into Coursework. In…

Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching (TELT) is a ubiquitous feature of the learning and teaching landscape at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), supported and guided by a university-wide TELT action plan. This paper reports on the most recent stage of an ongoing investigation into the use of ePortfolio learning technology to improve students'…

Establishing school-based professional learning appears so simple and straightforward during inspiring presentations at summer workshops, but keeping collaborative work focused on teaching and learning in such a way that it produces consistent results is a highly underestimated task. Investigations and experience from a group of researchers at the…