Reports on a survey conducted to ascertain actual practice regarding the delivery of engineering projects in the United States. Describes the breadth of pedagogy in the current delivery of engineering projects represented by the survey responses and the engineering education literature discussing project education. Highlights current trends in…

Suggests that engaging students in designing and making play spaces for younger children makes meaningful learning fun and instills values of community service. (JOW)

High school students helped researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory record and log internal temperatures of their mass spectrometers, allowed researchers access to the readings, and created a way for researchers to be telephoned automatically if temperatures exceeded a certain threshold. The project illustrates the value of…

Describes the current practice of the senior seminar at Ball State University and reflects on how the seminar has benefited both faculty and student participants. (Author/MM)

The topic of orthogonal trajectories is taught as a geometric application of first order differential equations. Instructors usually elaborate on the concept of a family of curves to emphasize that they are different even if their members are of the same type. In this article the author considers five families of ellipses, discusses their…

The rationale behind weeding books is to remove dated, obsolete, erroneous material and worn books in disrepair from the collection to make room for current titles. Students of Lakeview have discovered an innovative idea of creating an altered book from the weeded book by taking a hardcover book and changing the original cover by means of a…

The author of this article describes using a Fantasy Landscapes lesson to get students expressing environmental issues through art. The Fantasy Landscapes lesson is an exploration of art elements and design principles through visual problem solving that links ideas, language, and theory to art. To get students thinking specifically about…

Accounting students are generally well aware of the skills, education, and accomplishments needed to get that first job and initially enter the accounting profession. However, it is equally important that accounting students approaching graduation have a good understanding of the skills, education and accomplishments required for an experienced…

Project-Based Learning (PBL) connects standards-based content to real-world scenarios through the use of projects to improve student achievement. By engaging students in authentic problems that do not have a predetermined solution, students learn both subject matter and critical 21st-century skills. This "Focus On" addresses what…

This dissertation examines the content of a required classroom management course to determine how preservice teachers are prepared for managing problem behaviors. Qualitative content analysis of interviews with four adjunct classroom management course instructors, their course syllabi, textbooks, assignments and projects, ancillary course…

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of advanced second language (L2) students from Hong Kong who took part in a short-term sojourn in England after 14 weeks of preparation. While abroad, they lived with a host family, took literary/cultural studies courses, visited cultural sites, participated in debriefing sessions, and conducted…

A two-course sequence in electromagnetics (EM) was developed in order to address a perceived lack of student learning and engagement observed in a traditional, lecture-based EM course. The two-course sequence is named VECTOR: Vitalizing Electromagnetic Concepts To Obtain Relevance. This paper reports on the first course of the sequence. VECTOR…

Virtual worlds, computer-based simulated environments in which users interact via avatars, provide an opportunity for the highly realistic enactment of real life activities online. Unlike computer games, which have a pre-defined purpose, pay-off structure, and action patterns, virtual worlds can leave many of these elements for users to determine.…

This paper focuses on challenges in mentoring software development projects in the high school and analyzes difficulties encountered by Computer Science teachers in the mentoring process according to Shulman's Teacher Knowledge Base Model. The main difficulties that emerged from the data analysis belong to the following knowledge sources of…

Kalamazoo College is a selective, liberal arts college located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with total enrollment of approximately 1200 students. The primary introductory statistics course at Kalamazoo College is Applied Statistics I (Math 260). Working in small groups of 3 or 4 members each, students were required to formulate a question of interest,…