Education for sustainable development (ESD) espouses student-centred, transformative pedagogies that promote learning through active, participatory and experiential learning. Yet, traditional lectures provide limited opportunities for engaging students in such pedagogies. This article reports on the inclusion of sustainability pedagogies within…

The aim of this study was to apply current pedagogical research in order to develop an effective course and exercise structure for a physical chemistry thermodynamics course intended for second or third year university students of chemistry. A mixed-method approach was used to measure the impact the changes had on student learning. In its final…

This study applied an unconventional use of past examination papers by converting questions into hands-on experiments for students. Students in an experimental group were engaged in use of those experiments while the remainder attended conventional lectures with written practice. The results reflect that the experimental group positively improved…

Organic chemistry is very challenging to many students pursuing science careers. Flipping the classroom presents an opportunity to significantly improve student success by increasing active learning, which research shows is highly beneficial to student learning. However, flipping an entire course may seem too daunting or an instructor may simply…

On their first class day, introductory psychology students took a 14-question multiple-choice pretest on several principles of memory including primacy, recency, storage, retrieval, counterbalancing, and the free-recall method. I randomly preassigned students to come at one of two different times to the second class, 2 days later, when they either…

Teaching by night and reflecting on a subject by day is the way that Salman Khan sees education evolving in the age of online lectures. Khan believes he is onto something in what he styles the "flipped classroom." In Khan's view, there is no need for students to be divided into grades by age. Instead, they should learn at their own pace, moving on…

Promoting the adoption of an alternative pedagogy can be a difficult process. Many professors are not interested in significantly modifying how they teach their course. Those that are interested in pedagogical reform still have concerns that must be addressed before or during an implementation. This paper presents a case study following the…

The inverted classroom allows more in-class time for inquiry-based learning and for working through more advanced problem-solving activities than does the traditional lecture class. The skills acquired in this learning environment offer benefits far beyond the statistics classroom. This paper discusses four ways that can make the inverted…

This paper is about a framework as heuristic to design and develop a workshop for academic teaching staff to use tablets for teaching and learning in the classroom at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Theories of Cultural-Historical Activity and Engeström's activity systems are also incorporated, as are a critique and a critical analysis of the…

Perception of topic difficulty is a likely predictor of lecture capture video use, as student perception of difficulty has been shown to affect a variety of outcomes in academic settings. This study measured the relationship between perceived difficulty and the use of lecture capture technology in a second year biochemistry course while…

Purpose: Teaching methods such as Flipped Learning and Team-Based Learning require students to pre-learn course materials before a teaching session, because classroom exercises rely on students using self-gained knowledge. This is the reverse to "traditional" teaching when course materials are presented during a lecture, and students are…

With the burgeoning influence of cognitive neuroscience in the field of psychology, it is important to train, or at least expose, undergraduate psychology students to the discipline's methods. Unfortunately, many instructors are limited in their ability to provide such tangible experiences due to resource limitations. However, recent advances in…

We designed, implemented, and evaluated a game-based learning approach to increase student motivation and achievement for an undergraduate physical chemistry course. By focusing only on the most important game aspects, the implementation was realized with a production ratio of 1:8 (study load in hours divided by production effort in hours).…

Many post-secondary common book programs purport to increase a sense of community on campus. This study explored whether a common book program at a Canadian university was able to create a sense of community among students. Results indicate that in-class discussions about the book, liking the Facebook page, attending the author lecture, and…

Teaching academics are under pressure to move away from traditional lecture-tutorial teaching modes to less traditional forms. Such pressures are in addition to changes to funding arrangements and other developments that increasingly oblige universities to operate as businesses. The flow-on effects for teachers are increased student:staff ratios,…