This study associates the perceived effectiveness of alternative teaching methods with perceived instructional emphasis areas for each of two groups: faculty and students. It seeks to determine the congruency between faculty and student response. The results evidence a commonality between faculty and student perceptions as to the effectiveness of…

Much research has shown the benefits of additional anatomical learning and dissection beyond the first year of medical school human gross anatomy, all the way through postgraduate medical training. We have developed an interactive method for teaching eye and orbit anatomy to medical students in their ophthalmology rotation at Duke University…

We describe the development and implementation of an instructional design that focused on bringing multiple forms of active learning and student-centered pedagogies to a one-semester, undergraduate introductory biology course for both majors and nonmajors. Our course redesign consisted of three major elements: 1) reordering the presentation of the…

This study documents students' views about the nature of mathematics, the mathematics learning process and factors within the classroom that are perceived to impact upon the learning of mathematics. The participants were senior secondary school students. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to understand the students' views about their…

Two intervention studies are described. Both were designed to study the effects of teaching children about the inverse relation between addition and subtraction. The interventions were successful with 8-year-old children in Study 1 and to a limited extent with 5-year-old children in Study 2. In Study 1 teaching children about inversion increased…

This dissertation describes the teaching methods and educational philosophies of natural philosophy instructors at several of the colleges in colonial and early national North America. It finds two distinct approaches: the demonstrative, in which the instructor centers the course on visually engaging lecture-demonstrations, and the catechetical,…

Two experiments examined the effects of a multimedia technology referred to as "Time Compressed Animated Delivery" (TCAD), on student learning in a junior-level reproductive physiology course. In experiment 1, participating students received one of two presentations of the same instructional material: TCAD and a lecture captured on video. At the…

The move to increasingly flexible platforms for student learning and experience through provision of online lecture recordings is often interpreted by educators as students viewing attendance at lectures as optional. The trend toward the use of this technology is often met with resistance from some academic staff who argue that student attendance…

The focus groups of students representing a variety of majors, reported that assigning WTL exercises, WID papers, and guided-focus journals was indeed useful in helping then to learn the subject matter more comprehensively than the traditional method of lecturing and test taking. Students tended to report that they learned the information more in…

This paper offers a fresh look at measurement-based assessment of learning at university level. The paper draws on a rich literature that informs what quality entails for our universities. The quality assessment measurement (QAM) scale used has been designed centering on six set of competency parameters: resources, teaching and learning, research,…

We have optimized a procedure for igniting hydrogen-filled balloons containing metal salts to obtain the brightest possible flash while minimizing the quantity of airborne combustion products. We report air quality measurements in a lecture hall immediately after the demonstration. While we recommend that this demonstration be done outdoors or in…

As well as being a founding father of modern chemistry and physics Michael Faraday was also a skilled lecturer, able to explain scientific principles and ideas simply and concisely to nonscientific audiences. However science didactics today emphasizes the use of open and student-centered methods of teaching in which students find and develop…

In this study, the author examined how attendance in the lab is associated with students' lab grades and overall course grades in an introductory biology course. Results from this study indicate that academic motivation, as expressed by high rates of class attendance, is critical to students' success in introductory science courses. The highest…

This article reports on a research project which investigated higher education teaching in a partnership of 17 further education colleges across south-west England. One hundred and six respondents answered a web-based questionnaire which gave insights into their views on the role of the lecture in higher education in further education (HE in FE)…

The use of lectures is ubiquitous in higher-education institutions, but also heavily criticized from an andragogical viewpoint. A current challenge for lecturers is to provide opportunities for active learning during these sessions and to evaluate their impact on student experience. Three one-minute interventions based on the lecture materials…