The haptic paddle is a force-feedback joystick used at several universities in teaching System Dynamics, a core mechanical engineering undergraduate course where students learn to model dynamic systems in several domains. A second goal of the haptic paddle is to increase the accessibility of robotics and haptics by providing a low-cost device for…

Policymakers and educators alike increasing focus on faculty adoption of interactive teaching techniques as a way to improve undergraduate education. Yet, little empirical research exists that examines the processes whereby faculty make decisions about curriculum design and classroom teaching in real-world situations. In this study, I use the idea…

Over the past decade there have been several national reform movements focused on increasing the completion rates of community college students, yet those rates have remained at about 38%. If community colleges are to be reformed, much of this reform must focus on the faculty, their classroom practices, their perspectives on teaching and learning,…

Five years ago, a pair of science teachers at Woodland Park (Colorado) High School turned their pedagogical approach upside down. Rather than stand up in front of the classroom, they sent their respective students home with videos of themselves lecturing. And rather than assigning traditional homework, work that most students could get tripped up…

This work describes efforts to incorporate and evaluate the use of a YouTube writing assignment in large lecture classes to personalize learning and improve conceptual understanding of chemistry through peer- and self-explanation strategies. Although writing assignments can be a method to incorporate peer- and self-explanation strategies, this…

The international branch campus has emerged as a popular form of transnational higher education but to date little research has been undertaken on student perceptions and experiences, other than the student feedback evaluations conducted by institutions. This research employed a survey questionnaire to investigate student perceptions of study at…

This case study describes an effective method to ameliorate the cognitive load caused by new terminology and concepts in lectures. Ten online pre-lecture resources whose design was underpinned by the principles of cognitive load theory were provided to a class of 49 first year university level chemistry students. Each resource introduced a number…

This study investigated the effects of problem-solving method of teaching on secondary school students' achievement and retention in Social Studies. The study adopted the quasi-experimental, pre-test, post-test, control group design. The sample for the study consisted of 240 Junior Secondary School Class II students randomly selected from six…

Research has shown that asking conceptually based questions along with a personal response system (clickers) is an effective way of implementing the peer instruction pedagogy. Lecture tutorials are a paper-based method that also incorporates peer instruction. Past research has shown that both methods yield significant learning gains for students…

Today's undergraduates are highly engaged in a variety of social media outlets. Given their comfort with technology, we wondered if we could use this phenomenon to teach science-related material. We asked students to use freeware to make a short video with text, images, and music as a way to explain scientific concepts that are traditionally…

The traditional format for teaching courses to undergraduate students has long been that of lecture when professors speak and students listen. However, as times have evolved so too have the pedagogical methods in the classroom. In teaching a course on diversity and discrimination in the society, this instructor opted to combine several teaching…

The focus of this paper is to familiarize business discipline faculty with cognitive psychology theories of how students learn together with teaching techniques to assist and improve student learning. Student learning can be defined as the outcome from the retrieval (free recall) of desired information. Student learning occurs in two processes.…

Today's NetGen students require more multimedia and interactive learning environments and greater participation than previous generations. Personal response devices (PRDs, sometimes called Audience Response Devices or ARDs, better known as clickers) show promise in helping to meet that need. This article explores the literature of PRDs to develop…

Lack of satisfaction with the quality of the mathematical knowledge of non-mathematics majors has led to the design of new curricular materials. In this study, a mixed methods explanatory design was used to compare the performances of two groups of engineering majors enrolled in two courses on differential equations and investigate their written…

For many years, university teaching was based mainly on lectures, but critics point out that lecturing is mainly a one-way method of communication that does not involve significant audience participation. Nowadays e-learning has become a distance learning paradigm using information technology as the Internet, intranets, emails and multimedia…