Behavioral and Social Science (BSS) classes provide students with understandings of human behaviors, motivations, and actions that are crucial to confronting both social and personal problems. Moreover, most community college degrees require that students take at least one BSS class - anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and/or…

Guided inquiry is an active learning technique featuring collaborative group learning with a structured set of models and highly structured questions for students to discuss and answer. Moving this technique to an online delivery format presents challenges, leading to questions about the effectiveness of this technique during online instruction.…

While active learning strategies have been promoted by researchers as practices to increase performance and retention, some practices have been shown to have unintended negative effects on students such as increasing anxiety. Students often report the debilitating effect of test-taking anxiety on their performance. This study investigated the use…

Mathematics is one of the most emphasized subjects and has grown immensely to provide a strong base for programs in science, engineering and technology. Training students in this field will give them the opportunity to improve their high order thinking skills (HOTS). But the students' HOTS level is at low stage due to the learning approaches…

Two case studies were conducted to examine whether inquiry-based learning (IBL) can help students in understanding normal distributions, and to determine if IBL methods have any effect on students' conceptual and computational capabilities. There were 16 students in the traditional class and 17 students in the IBL-implemented class who…

Recently, global trends in technological development have brought about innovations in educational paradigms, thus giving rise to significant adoption of learner-centered and problem-centered approaches with greater potential to impart the next generation of learners compared to a more dominant teacher-centered approach. In view of this, this…

To determine whether inquiry-based learning positively impacts undergraduate student learning and performance, we incorporated a guided inquiry-based activity (IBA) into two introductory and one upper level biology courses. We hypothesized that incorporation of IBA enhances student learning compared with noninquiry-based activities (NIBA). We…

The promotion of spatial skills is essential in chemistry education. However, the process of acquiring these skills can be monotonous if learning is limited to the memorization of Newman projections or 3D molecular kits. Existing approaches to learning using visualizing tools require physical models which limit learning activities to within the…

Team-based learning is an instructional method of specifically structured in class team activities that has been proposed as an alternative to traditional lecture methods. Proponents of TBL claim that it promotes aspects of learning that traditional lecture methods do not. There have been numerous studies examining the benefits of TBL; however,…

The purpose of this study was to compare community college students' learning experiences and performance for lecture-based, active learning, and flipped classroom teaching approaches. Participants were second-semester computer programming students (n = 103) at a mid-sized college of applied arts and technology. Garrison's (2011) Community of…

Active learning has been shown to improve student learning and engagement in many 4-year institutions; however, large-scale studies on the efficacy of active learning in community colleges are lacking. In this study, we investigate the effects of active learning in a first semester majors' general biology course at a large, suburban community…

Learners have to engage in academically purposeful instructional endeavors to be successful in school. Latest research indicates that the learners of today are not as interested in educational deeds as they need to be. Educational stakeholders should look for means to address this tendency to have a positive influence on educational results. This…

Research has shown that a moderate to high level of Active Learning (AL) is helpful for all students, especially for disadvantaged students. In this study we measured student perceptions of case-based learning (CBL), a type of AL, in anatomy and physiology courses at a four-year university and a community college. We compared perceptions of CBL to…

Purpose. The first purpose of this study was to identify and describe what actions faculty experts recommend for California Community Colleges to ensure maximum effectiveness of instructional strategies and related academic support programs in developmental mathematics by the year 2020. The second purpose of the study was to identify and describe…

Karl Marx's revolutionary call, "Workers of the World Unite," resonates with many in today's society. This article describes and assesses an easily reproducible classroom activity that simulates both alienating, and perhaps more importantly, non-alienating states of production as described by Marx. This hands-on learning activity gives…