Computer mediated communication (CMC) offers new opportunities for learners to create communities of inquiry that allow for more active learning. This paper reports on the use of a Learning Management System (LMS) as a tool to facilitate students' writing and critical thinking skills. The primary data for the study came from students'…

In a cluster of courses called Food for Thought, seven faculty from different departments (including Biology, Economics, Sociology, Chemistry, Health and Wellness, and Foreign Language) teach students about food information, food consumerism, nutrition and health. The classes all have a shared learning outcome focused on developing the student as…

Didactic lessons are only one part of the multimodal teaching strategies used in gross anatomy courses today. Increased emphasis is placed on providing more opportunities for students to develop lifelong learning and critical thinking skills during medical training. In a pilot program designed to promote more engaged and independent learning in…

The Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) has developed twelve professional values and competencies that all students in accredited programs must demonstrate before graduation. This study asked Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication (ASJMC) program administrators which competencies…

In two studies, we assessed the effectiveness of a classroom activity designed to increase students' ability to think critically. This activity involved watching and discussing an infomercial that contained pseudoscientific claims, thus incorporating course material on good research design and critical thinking. In Study 1, we used a…

The current study sought to investigate the relationship between critical thinking and speaking ability among EFL students at Payame Noor University (PNU) of Rasht. This research concerned determining the fact that whether language students who are as critical thinker, perform better in their speaking ability or not. In order to answer the…

The "field trip" is a key pedagogical tool within geographical education to encourage deep learning, though they are increasingly difficult to implement due to reduced budgets, safety concerns and increasing class sizes. We incorporated three field-learning activities into a large introductory module. A traditional staff-led trip was the…

A teacher that emphasizes reasoning, logic and validity gives their students access to mathematics as an effective way of practicing critical thinking. All students have the ability to enhance and expand their critical thinking when learning mathematics. Students can develop this ability when confronting mathematical problems, identifying possible…

This action research study explored the effects of an intervention linking both culture and citizenship in a tenth-grade English language class, and aimed at finding evidence of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) skills through the writing of narrative texts in English. Participants were 75 tenth-grade students, between the ages of 14…

This mixed methods study examines whether engaging in a problem-solving project to create Math-eos (digital videos) increases pre-service teachers' understanding of the relationship between visual, auditory, and verbal representation and critical thinking in mathematics. Additionally, the study looks at what aspects of a digital problem solving…

Concept mapping has been widely used in various fields to facilitate students' organization of knowledge. Previous studies have, however, pointed out that it is difficult for students to construct concept maps from the abundant searched data without appropriate scaffolding. Thus, researchers have suggested that students could produce high quality…

First-Year Seminars (FYS) are among the high-impact practices described by AAC&U. We studied the long-standing First-Year Seminar Program at our public research university for the ways in which writing assignments--individualized for each seminar--help faculty and students achieve program objectives in critical and analytical thinking, the…

Assessing complex constructs such as those discussed under the umbrella of 21st century constructs highlights the need for a principled assessment design and validation approach. In our discussion, we made a case for three considerations: (a) taking construct complexity into account across various stages of assessment development such as the…

This study aimed at analyzing Action Pack English textbooks' texts based on the availability of life skills for 5th, 6th and 7th grades, and to determine the frequencies and percentages of the life skills present in each text. The sample of the study was English language textbooks for Action Pack series for the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades. The life…

This action research study evaluated the effects of literacy strategies on academic achievement, motivation, and engagement of eighth-grade social studies students. Incorporating literacy strategies included teaching students to construct meaning, think critically, and build content knowledge, while stimulating their interests, using multiple…