In this article, we describe a way to encourage students to envision "real utopias" through the Global Village experience at the Heifer Ranch in Arkansas. The Global Village experience introduces participants to issues associated with global hunger, poverty, environmental sustainability, and resource consumption and provides…

Thermodynamics is a fundamental foundation of all engineering disciplines. A vast majority of engineering undergraduate programmes contain one or more courses on thermodynamics, and many engineers use thermodynamics every day to analyse or design energy systems. However, there is extensive anecdotal evidence as well as a wide range of published…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the self-perceived competencies of 231 Italian students enrolled in a psychological degree program and involved in a practicum. It analyzes the subjective perception of the competences that students expect to develop, acknowledge as developed and that might be inferred from tasks performed during the practicum;…

Self-directed learning is an important form of adult learning (Caffarella, 1993; Knowles, 1975; Knowles, Holton & Swanson, 2005; Merriam, 2001; Merriam & Caffarella, 1999). The strategies of self-directed learning allow adult learners to cope better with their studies while fulfilling family, work and other commitments. This study…

Evaluations of bystander intervention education programs demonstrate that this approach results in students' increased willingness to intervene in prosocial ways to prevent sexual violence (e.g., Moynihan, Banyard, Arnold, Eckstein, & Stapleton, 2010). These programs often focus on first-year college students, though theories and research on…

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that may protect or insulate people from engaging in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI). College students (N = 14,385) from 8 universities participated in a web-based survey. Results of bivariate correlations and multiple regression revealed that spirituality/religiosity, life satisfaction, and life…

Learning the chemistry of compounds containing carbonyl groups is difficult for undergraduate students partly because of a convolution of multiple possible reaction sites, competitive reactions taking place at those sites, different criteria needed to discern between the mechanisms of these reactions, and no straightforward selection method…

For some students, law school leads to a perception of legal education as favouring technical proficiency and structural similarity over innovation and creativity, leading to disengagement in learning. To address this, we offered a creative option in two first-year law courses, worth 20% of the grade. Students who chose this option created a…

This study investigated whether an Earth Systems-based course focused on raising postgraduate students' awareness of sustainability, from a systems-thinking perspective, would produce graduates with commitment to drive the sustainability agenda forward with a broad perspective. It investigated students' pre and post-course perceptions of…

A survey covering the scientific and social aspects of climate change was administered to examine U.S. undergraduate student mental models, and compare knowledge between groups based on major and environmental group membership. A Knowledge Score (scale 0-35, mean score = 17.84) was generated for respondents at two, central East Coast, U.S.…

The aim of this research was to examine the relationship between music preferences of different mode and tempo and personality traits. The survey included 323 students who had to fill out the following tests: questionnaire of music preferences, scale of optimism and pessimism and International Personality Item Pool for measuring Big Five…

Background: There are some theoretical evidences that explain the relationships between core beliefs (i.e., epistemological beliefs) and peripheral beliefs (self-efficacy in learning) in the literature. The close relationships of such type of beliefs with attitudes are also discussed by some researchers. Constructing a model that investigates…

This study examined whether life skills could be developed in a Project Based Learning (PBL) course. The participants were students enrolled in a graduate level PBL course. The same 35-question survey was given to students at the beginning and end of the course, and students were asked to rank their life skills using a Likert scale. Additionally,…

In 2008 a new clinical anatomy curriculum with integrated medical imaging component was introduced into the University of Sydney Medical Program. Medical imaging used for teaching the new curriculum included normal radiography, MRI, CT scans, and ultrasound imaging. These techniques were incorporated into teaching over the first two years of the…

Measures of school-level growth in student outcomes are common tools for assessing the impacts of schools. The vast majority of these measures use standardized tests as the outcome of interest, even though emerging evidence demonstrates the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL). In this article, we present results from using the first…