A detailed study of learning and teaching (L&T) of chemical engineering distillation to a mixed-ability small class of 13 students who are ordinarily full-time in-house employees in industry is reported. The course consisted of 9 × 2-h lectures (18 hours) and 9 × 2-h tutorials (18 hours). It was delivered over nine business days "in…

This article uses situated learning theory to consider current tutor assessment and feedback practices in relation to learning practices employed by students outside the overt curriculum. The case is made that an emphasis on constructive alignment and explicitly articulating assessment requirements within curricula may be misplaced. Outside of the…

Research suggests that introductory physics students often have difficulty using a concept in contexts different from the ones in which they learned it without explicit guidance to help them make the connection between the different contexts. We have been investigating advanced students' learning of quantum mechanics concepts and have developed…

This article describes student perceptions and outcomes in relation to the use of a novel interteaching approach. The study sample (n = 260) was taken from a large human physiology class, which included both first- and second-year students. However, unlike the first-year students, the second-year students had significant prior knowledge, having…

Federal legislation specifies equitable access to education for all students at all levels of education, including postsecondary. To explore how well the physics education research (PER) community is currently serving students who inherently vary in needs, abilities, and interests, four research-based curricula (Tutorials in Introductory Physics,…

An exploration of pronunciation tutorials designed for speakers of English as an additional language (EAL) in a university context in Australia suggests that developing abilities to speak clearly involves more than just focusing on the sounds that are uttered. Students' comments and observations collected during pronunciation tutorials highlight…

The use of current and emerging tools in education is becoming a blistering topic among educators and educational institutions. Gaming in education may be viewed as an interference to learning but its role in education is to increase students' motivation and engagement, to enhance visual skills, to improve students' interaction and collaboration…

For over four years, students enrolled in remedial writing classes who attended eight writing center tutorials directly linked to their assignments had an average pass rate of 95.6 percent, whereas students who did not attend any writing center tutorials had an average pass rate of 39.4 percent. These correlations are just that--correlations that…

A lock-in amplifier is a versatile instrument frequently used in physics research. However, many students struggle with the basic operating principles of a lock-in amplifier which can lead to a variety of difficulties. To improve students' understanding, we have been developing and evaluating a research-based tutorial which makes use of a computer…

Learning quantum mechanics is challenging, even for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Research-validated interactive tutorials that build on students' prior knowledge can be useful tools to enhance student learning. We have been investigating student difficulties with quantum mechanics pertaining to the double-slit experiment in…

Undergraduate students are increasingly working with academic staff to evaluate and design teaching materials in Higher Education, thereby moving from being passive consumers of knowledge to genuine partners in their education. Here we describe a student partnership project run at the University of Cambridge, which aimed to improve undergraduate…

Building on prior research into active learning pedagogy in political science, I discuss the development of a new active learning strategy called the "thesis-building carousel," designed for use in political theory tutorials. This use of active learning pedagogy in a graduate student-led political theory tutorial represents the overlap…

This article will explore one library's experience creating best practices for the creation of video tutorials. First, a literature review establishes the best practices other creators have used. Then, the authors apply these best practices to the creation of their first video tutorial. Finally, they evaluate the usefulness of each practice in…

Equivalence-based instruction (EBI) has been used to successfully teach college-level concepts in research laboratories, but few studies have examined the results of such instruction on classroom performance. The current study answered a basic question about the ordering of training stimuli as well as an applied question regarding the effects of…

Historically, the teaching of literacy in American classrooms has been "restricted to formalized, monolingual, monocultural and ruled-governed forms of language" (The New London Group, 1996, p. 60-61) which disproportionately negatively affects bilingual children of color. In this case study we aimed to understand how bilingual second…