This paper presents an overview of modalities that can be used to make learning statistics fun. Representative examples or points of departure in the literature are provided for no less than 20 modalities. Empirical evidence of effectiveness specific to statistics education is starting to emerge for some of these modalities--namely, humor, song,…

Within psychological and educational research, self-report methodology dominates the study of student motivation. The present review argues that the scope of motivation research can be expanded by incorporating a wider range of methodologies and measurement tools. Several authors have suggested that current study of motivation is overly reliant on…

In both universities and K-12 schools, students leave one world and enter another as they attend classes in discipline-specific domains. But how can students gain the experiences necessary to make discoveries--for personal satisfaction, for academic enlightenment, and perhaps even for the betterment of humankind--without educators who see the…

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) carried out the "Learning Sciences and Brain Research" project (1999-2007) to investigate how neuroscience research can inform education policy and practice. This transdisciplinary project brought many challenges. Within the…

A place-based learning community called "Klamath Connection" was designed to improve the academic performance of freshman in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) majors at Humboldt State University, a midsize public institution in a location geographically and culturally unfamiliar to the majority of its students. The…

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how PBL student teams develop specific leadership configurations when implementing interdisciplinary projects and whether or not tutors help in dealing with the group interactions that are subsequently generated. The data set was drawn from 2 cohorts of first-year students engaged in PBL activities in an…

The nature of nanoscience and nanotechnology (collectively, nano) are discussed as important examples of the modern sciences and technologies that are having an increasing impact on all aspects of life. In this Position paper, general proposals are made for the levels of understanding of nano that might be attained by whole populations. The ideas…

The research reported in this paper explores the applicability and efficacy of a variant of problem-based learning, the Preparation for Future Learning (PFL) approach, to teaching and learning within the context of a cross-curricular, middle school data literacy unit called "Thinking with Data" (TWD). A quasi-experimental design was used…

The paradigm of content area literacy instruction is shifting from a view of literacy as generalizable across the curriculum to a disciplinary perspective of literacies specific to the specialized language, text structures, and habits of thinking within particular subject areas. Preservice STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)…

This paper describes a new severe weather laboratory exercise for an Introductory Weather and Climate class, appropriate for first and second year college students (including nonscience majors), that incorporates inquiry-based learning techniques. In the lab, students play the role of meteorologists making forecasts for severe weather. The…

Interdisciplinarity has become a growing emphasis in the U.S. higher education and the prevalence of interdisciplinary doctoral programs is one indicator of such growth. Despite this growth, the experiences of individuals within interdisciplinary doctoral programs have been largely unexamined in the literature. This paper examines a self-designed…

This article describes a situated engineering project at a South African HE institution which is underpinned by collaboration between Applied Language Studies (DALS) and Mechanical Engineering. The collaboration requires language practitioners and engineering experts to negotiate and collaborate on academic literacies practices, discourse…

Graduate students education is falling short of what the twenty-first century demands from its next generation of leaders; indeed, many educational leaders and scholars have called for graduate education to include richer, more relevant experiences (Stanton & Wagner, 2006; Stewart, 2010; Walker, Jones, Bueschel, & Hutchings, 2008). At the…

Although interdisciplinary teamwork is a recommended practice and important for coordinated interdisciplinary programming in special education, there is limited research on pedagogical practices to prepare professionals to work together effectively. This study examined the effectiveness of a graduate interdisciplinary teamwork course taught…

Using an apparently simple problem, ''Design a cylindrical can that will hold a liter of milk,'' this paper demonstrates how engineering design may facilitate the teaching of the following ideas to secondary students: linear and non-linear relationships; basic geometry of circles, rectangles, and cylinders; unit measures of area and volume;…