Teamwork and collaboration are twenty-first century skills valued by STEM employers for addressing the most urgent problems in society. To prepare undergraduate STEM students, they must graduate valuing teamwork and collaboration. The Integrated Concentration in STEM (iCons) program aims to meet this goal by utilizing interdisciplinary team-based…

Reform efforts in different parts of the world call for the adoption of integrated approaches to STEM education. However, little is known about how teachers work, as members of learning communities, to design STEM teaching material such as lesson plans. To address this gap in the literature, we examined the design of STEM lesson plans by…

By some estimates, over 1.2 billion tons of soil was blown across the Great Plains during the height of the Dust Bowl. The so-called "black blizzards" these massive dust storms caused suffocated cattle, sickened children, and destroyed thousands of family farms. Formerly prosperous farmers, unsure why they had such bad luck, wondered if…

This study examines the interdisciplinary approach to musical literacy through the transmission of the Guinan Caicha Xi Chinese Opera, a traditional folk opera from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. This opera, historically performed by tea farmers, integrates storytelling, expressive melodies, and cultural symbolism, serving as a…

Song Ci art songs, originating during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE), represent a harmonious blend of classical Chinese poetry and traditional music, embodying profound cultural, historical, and artistic significance. This study investigates the educational significance of Song Ci art songs, focusing on their role in fostering literacy within…

The Zhuang Tianqin Ceremony, a traditional ritual of the Zhuang people in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China, represents a harmonious blend of music, spirituality, and cultural identity centered on the Tianqin, a plucked musical instrument. This study investigates the educational literacy development in the transmission of the Zhuang Tianqin…

Many teaching strategies exist to develop critical thinking with students. Art students engage with critical thinking in a "Connected Art" workshop, implemented in three diverse Higher Education (HE) learning environments. Participants are interdisciplinary adult learners in the UK, Germany and Spain. Using joint practice development,…

New approaches to microbiology education are needed to ensure equitable representation in microbiology and to build literacy in microbiology and science broadly. To address this goal, we developed a course held at the collegiate level that uniquely integrated microbiology, Indigenous studies, science and technology studies, and arts and…

An effective educational response to the climate emergency requires disrupting existing ideas about universities' roles, curriculum design and the relationship between educators, students and communities. This study examines an approach to curriculum development taken by academics at The Open University, UK whilst developing the postgraduate short…

Background: Engineering problems are open-ended and complex, involving technical and social aspects, yet engineering education focuses on technical training and closed-ended problems. To prepare engineering students, curricula should foster sociotechnical thinking--the ability to consider the interplay of technical and social factors during…

This article aims to explore the integration of wicked problems into sustainability education, within the context of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Zimbabwe. As a complex health challenge, increased microbial resistance disproportionately impacts Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe. Engaging AMR in higher education institutions (HEI) requires a…

The analysis of citation patterns in the scholarly landscape of data literacy using data collected from Scopus and analysed using Vosviewer reveals significant findings. Initially, 997 documents were identified, averaging 52 per year, but a criterion of 10 citations per document narrowed down the subset to 205 documents, indicating substantial…

In this design case, I discuss the design and development of an open educational resource textbook on teaching methods of early literacy, primarily geared toward preservice teachers in Iowa. This design case intends to provide an interdisciplinary example of an accessible, multimodal, interactive, contextually relevant, and culturally inclusive…

Museums are increasingly transforming from passive repositories of history and culture into dynamic spaces that facilitate interdisciplinary learning and active community engagement. This shift is evident in the integration of art and science within museum settings, which enhances public understanding of complex global challenges such as climate…

Vertically integrated project courses (VIPs) are successful models for embedding long-term research participation into engineering curricula. Whether this model can be translated into gains for laboratory-based projects in biological sciences is unknown. Most biological sciences course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are a single…