This active learning pedagogical technique aims to improve students' learning in a two-semester, upper-division biochemistry course sequence in which the vast majority of students enrolled will continue on to medical or graduate schools. Instead of lecturing, the Instructor moves to the side of the room, thereby becoming "the guide on the side".…

Student plagiarism is a pervasive and increasing problem at all levels of study in tertiary institutions. This study attempted explicitly and implicitly to address issues of plagiarism within the broad context of an academic writing framework in tutorials in a first-year module at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. Despite these…

Wikiality, Wikimania, WikiGnomes, Wikitrolls, Wikibots, Wikipediaholism... all these neologisms have been coined in recent years to talk about Wikipedia, the online, open-source encyclopedia. In this article, the author describes a project that aims to craft a pedagogical approach that incorporated student-contribution to Wikipedia in order to…

The intent of this exploratory study is to identify the information-seeking behaviors used by community college students when using information resources to complete a writing assignment, the expectations that faculty have in regard to that writing assignment and the role librarians can play in that process through information literacy…

This study presents the results of a fifteen-month research project conducted with a group of Latina (Mexicana) immigrant mothers who took part in an after-school family literacy program that was grounded in a participatory approach to education. This family literacy program emphasized a "strengths" perspective by acknowledging the rich resources…

A critical/creative paradigm in contemporary English carries with it an imperative that students should be given opportunities for deep engagement with texts relevant to what matters in their everyday lives. In this paper, I argue that the materiality of everyday life includes the physical and geographic places where we live. When students live in…

In this "O-"fish"-ial" research project, third-grade students use multiple resources to research several fish species, write a research paper and develop a PowerPoint presentation to communicate their findings. In addition, students actually examine these species up close with samples from the local market, and then conclude the project with a…

Merging science and writing to enhance both subjects was the objective of a venture known as "Plant Notes." At first, teacher-written notes served as the inspiration for this writing assignment. Later, eclectic student-written novellas, poems, song lyrics, mnemonic devices, and field trip recollections made their way into "Plant Notes" and stole…

This study examined the relationship between teacher written feedback and change in the disciplinary writing of tertiary students in their final year of undergraduate study. The student texts and teacher written feedback examined arose naturally out of a third year disciplinary-based unit in which each student submitted a text three times over the…

In the summer of 2006, Open Borders Project/Proyecto Sin Fronteras, a small educational center in the heart of Latino North Philadelphia, sponsored a six-week program to teach teens from Philadelphia public schools how to plan and conduct interviews, edit audio files, and write the necessary preparatory material to produce short pieces about…

Using technical writing basics, a cohort of Lighthorse Police Officers from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation added to their tribe's cultural history by recording part of their family and clan history as well as documenting their law enforcement careers and education.

In this article, the author describes her use of direct instruction to introduce the skill of determining source reliability in a fifth-grade unit on immigration in American history. She structures instruction to help students establish a thinking-skill strategy that results in not only an understanding of immigration in the late 1800s to early…

The Patchwork Text has emerged as one of the most influential assessment innovations in Higher Education in recent years. As an assessment strategy with the potential to engage a wide range of learners, the patchwork has enjoyed a rising profile in the range of teaching, learning and assessment methods developed in the context of the widening…

"Welcome to Buckeye City" is an adolescent online community that was maintained by 25 Korean students who attended American schools. On the website, the students engaged in "relay writing"--a writing activity in which each person contributed a portion of an evolving story in a relayed manner. Relay writing offers teachers a new and valuable window…

Carter (2007) identifies four meta-genres associated with writing activities that can help students learn discipline-specific writing skills relative to standards within a given field: these include problem solving, empirical approaches to analysis, selection of sources to use within research, and production of materials that meet accepted…