When teaching to the "typical" student doesn't work, teachers can tap into students' areas of greatest comfort, confidence, and passion and teach to their strengths. Five principles guide this work, which involves learning to recognize diverse student strengths, helping students see their capabilities in a positive light, helping students…

In this article, the author talks about his personal experience and the lessons he learned from failing in his endeavors. He further emphasizes that testing a hypothesis and putting oneself on the line require an emotional readiness to take a fall. The most important skill students can develop is the willingness to put themselves on that line…

This investigation examined, in 1012 secondary students, both consonant and dissonant response patterns in approaches to learning (evaluated using the LPQ questionnaire; [Biggs, J. (1987). Learning process questionnaire. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research]) as well as in learning conceptions and learning strategies (examined…

This study explores how adults learn from asynchronous written dialogue through the lens of psychological type preferences. We asked participants to discover their dominant and auxiliary psychological preferences using the Personal Empowerment through Type inventory. Participants then completed an open-ended survey in which they described their…

This article is a narrative of the author's experience during his trip to Antarctica, his seventh continent. He describes the two-day cruise each way across the Drake Passage as the most memorable.

The authors hope to show how a geometric insight can add to the richness of our students' experiences when they first encounter the solutions to two equations in two unknowns.

The goals of higher education often entail the development of students' character. Rarely, however, are these character development goals connected to the unique design and delivery of distance education programs. Additionally, the research literature that explores the character development aspects of distance education is sparse. Thus the purpose…

There is growing concern in Europe that some students are not well-equipped to start a Bachelor's or Master's programme, especially when the programme has a strong mathematical focus. In particular, attention is drawn to problems with mathematics in the transition from secondary to higher education. Higher education expects a certain level of…

This paper presents a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach to support and promote deeper student learning in a computer architecture course. A PBL approach using a simulator building activity was used to teach part of the course. The remainder of the course was taught using a traditional lecture-tutorial approach. Qualitative data was collected…

As demands for online courses continue to increase and educational institutions rise to meet the needs of students, it is imperative faculty members are guided by the Seven Principles (Chickering and Gamson, 1986; Erhmann, 2003) of effective teaching as they develop online courses. This includes the judicious selection of distance learning tools…

Australia continues to face teaching shortages in rural schools. Indeed, preservice teachers may be reluctant to apply for rural teaching positions, particularly as most have had no rural teaching experiences. What may motivate non-rural preservice teachers to seek employment in rural schools? This study investigates 17 preservice teachers' first…

This report explores the full cost to individuals of participating in further education in England and Wales--the nature and level of cost that individuals incur when they participate and the impact student financial support has on an individual's learning experience. Under taken jointly by the Learning and Skills Network and the National Union of…

This article presents the findings from classroom based research into the use of SMART Boards (interactive whiteboards) with kindergarten children. SMART Boards have been used successfully over the past 8 years at Abbotsleigh Junior School as innovative ways to enhance teaching and learning and facilitate assessment in primary Science. Key…

The increasing amount of new scientific information made available by computers and the Internet is demonstrated by the growing number of available health sciences journals. Medical students, nursing students, those in other health science disciplines, and clinicians need to make information more manageable and accessible, especially at the point…

Virtual worlds create a new opportunity to enrich the educational experience through media-rich immersive learning. Virtual worlds have gained notoriety in games such as World of Warcraft (WoW), which has become the most successful online game ever, and in "general purpose" worlds, such as Second Life (SL), whose participation levels (more than 10…