Today's best constructivist teaching reflects the legacies of educational visionaries such as John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, Reuven Feuerstein, Howard Gardner, and Marian Diamond. Creative cognitive designs stem from three essential elements: creative teaching genius, excellent instructional methods, and expansive, interconnective…

Introduces the international science education program Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE). The program is based on the active, hands-on involvement of students and data collected using the scientific protocols file on GLOBE's website. (YDS)

Investigated whether student engagement in three good educational practices (cooperation with peers, active learning, faculty-student interaction) increased between 1983 and 1997 in response to the calls to improve the quality of undergraduate education in the United States. Found that the frequency of involvement in these good practices did not…

Addresses questions of evaluating online learning for the Army. Topics include whether traditional evaluation criteria are applicable to online learning environments; the role of the instructor; new evaluation and assessment tools that are progressing learning strategies for soldiers in an online environment; and the importance of active…

Service learning creates camper-centered, experiential activities in the community and brings the needs of the community into camp. Outcomes of service learning include development of critical thinking and civic responsibility, increased camper collaboration, replacement of passive instruction with active learning, and increased self-esteem. Two…

In a history class, students typically listen to the teacher lecture, read from their textbook, then take a test. Although they may sometimes be required to memorize information or read stories about historical events and people, they rarely work with other students, use original documents, write term papers, or discuss the significance of what…

This case study of an online graduate course determines the message characteristics of the instructor, volunteer teaching assistants, and students in online discussions, and proposes a mentoring, coaching, and facilitating model for online discussions. The researchers developed a coding system based on the literature of mentoring, coaching, and…

Case studies were applied in six courses to help students (1) understand complex and complicated issues and describe interrelated processes; (2) discuss policy- and decision-making ideologies that either are politically or socially charged; and (3) engage in informative and focused classroom discussion. Students' written comments and scaled…

In the world of project execution, "design/build" is the convention. With its emphasis on the benefits of early involvement (integration of design, engineering execution, design-build, procurement, and construction decisions), it has become the dominant mode (Rothman, 2004). In this project, students explore the design/build principle of…

We examined the relation between self-explaining and encoding among kindergartners. For 5 days, children (n = 27) took turns solving addition problems with an adult expert who always used an advanced addition strategy. During the game, children explained the expert's answers (Explain-Expert), explained their own answers (Explain-Novice), or did…

Current educational literature stresses the importance of a task-based approach to instruction, rather than an emphasis on content delivery. However, as institutions attempt to meet the demand for online courses, many offerings still focus on presenting online content resources with minimal opportunity for interactions and active learning. To help…

Accountability pressures influence all levels of psychology instruction. In this article we explore how to meet those pressures with integrity, focusing on authentic assessment and teaching as a primary solution. We propose a rubric to describe the progress of students' acquisition of scientific inquiry skills applied to behavior and provide an…

Communication Challenge Softball is a developmentally appropriate game for middle school students. The game allows them to develop new communication skills using American Sign Language (signing). Traditional softball has been a part of physical education for years, and remains a popular sport played by children in community leagues throughout the…

This article is a retrospective look at how the folks in business schools look at the case method for they have been at this business a long time and have produced beaucoup cases. The author features the books by the Canadian authors on case study teaching in business. The case method described by the authors is a discussion-based learning…

A professor of Biology shares his experience at the BioQUEST workshop, which he attended. He talks about the BioQUEST Curriculum Consortium, which is a large-scale college biology project, focusing on active learning strategies, and the use of technology in teaching. The approaches presented at the workshop are described.