In the past 30 years, university-level chemistry education in China has been experiencing significant changes because of the rapid expansion of its university education system. These changes are reflected in improvements to the existing education goals, classroom teaching methods, textbooks, teaching facilities, teacher profiles, lab activities,…

In a 2008 survey of students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 82 percent of undergraduate respondents said they preferred courses with online lecture content, and 60 percent said they would even be willing to pay for lecture capture services. Colleges and universities that have gone down the lecture capture path have found four essential…

Programs in biochemistry invariably encompass the principles of protein engineering. Students often display increased understanding and enthusiasm when theoretical concepts are underpinned by practical example. Herein are presented five case studies, each focusing upon a commercial protein product engineered to enhance its application-relevant…

The laboratory experiment, which acts as a capstone, integrated lecture-laboratory exercise involving solution preparation, pH buffers, [E[subscript]H] (reduction potential) buffers, organic reaction mechanisms, reaction kinetics, and instrumental analysis is presented. The students completing the lecture and laboratory exercises could gain a…

This study associates the perceived effectiveness of alternative teaching methods with perceived instructional emphasis areas for each of two groups: faculty and students. It seeks to determine the congruency between faculty and student response. The results evidence a commonality between faculty and student perceptions as to the effectiveness of…

Much research has shown the benefits of additional anatomical learning and dissection beyond the first year of medical school human gross anatomy, all the way through postgraduate medical training. We have developed an interactive method for teaching eye and orbit anatomy to medical students in their ophthalmology rotation at Duke University…

We describe the development and implementation of an instructional design that focused on bringing multiple forms of active learning and student-centered pedagogies to a one-semester, undergraduate introductory biology course for both majors and nonmajors. Our course redesign consisted of three major elements: 1) reordering the presentation of the…

This study documents students' views about the nature of mathematics, the mathematics learning process and factors within the classroom that are perceived to impact upon the learning of mathematics. The participants were senior secondary school students. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to understand the students' views about their…

Two intervention studies are described. Both were designed to study the effects of teaching children about the inverse relation between addition and subtraction. The interventions were successful with 8-year-old children in Study 1 and to a limited extent with 5-year-old children in Study 2. In Study 1 teaching children about inversion increased…

This dissertation describes the teaching methods and educational philosophies of natural philosophy instructors at several of the colleges in colonial and early national North America. It finds two distinct approaches: the demonstrative, in which the instructor centers the course on visually engaging lecture-demonstrations, and the catechetical,…

Two experiments examined the effects of a multimedia technology referred to as "Time Compressed Animated Delivery" (TCAD), on student learning in a junior-level reproductive physiology course. In experiment 1, participating students received one of two presentations of the same instructional material: TCAD and a lecture captured on video. At the…

The move to increasingly flexible platforms for student learning and experience through provision of online lecture recordings is often interpreted by educators as students viewing attendance at lectures as optional. The trend toward the use of this technology is often met with resistance from some academic staff who argue that student attendance…

The focus groups of students representing a variety of majors, reported that assigning WTL exercises, WID papers, and guided-focus journals was indeed useful in helping then to learn the subject matter more comprehensively than the traditional method of lecturing and test taking. Students tended to report that they learned the information more in…

This paper offers a fresh look at measurement-based assessment of learning at university level. The paper draws on a rich literature that informs what quality entails for our universities. The quality assessment measurement (QAM) scale used has been designed centering on six set of competency parameters: resources, teaching and learning, research,…

We have optimized a procedure for igniting hydrogen-filled balloons containing metal salts to obtain the brightest possible flash while minimizing the quantity of airborne combustion products. We report air quality measurements in a lecture hall immediately after the demonstration. While we recommend that this demonstration be done outdoors or in…