While textbooks may remain important tools for information delivery, how can educators find and present interesting and relevant content to eighteen to twenty-something-year-olds? If learning is to take place, capturing and maintaining student attention, interest, and active engagement is a primary challenge in the classroom. Given this reality,…

This article describes the author's experience designing and implementing an inquiry-based learning (IBL) pedagogical approach to an upper-division undergraduate cryptology course. The author shares the course goals and how the IBL style supports their achievement. The article concludes with sample activities -- in-class exercises that touch on…

Courses: This paper presents a course design that aims to stimulate student ownership of learning. It was developed for a semester-long undergraduate course in political communication, but it is equally suitable for courses at graduate level and on other topics. The course design will unfold its potential best in classes with up to 30 students.…

This paper is a practical how-to guide to help you start using active learning or to have greater success and more fun with it. We categorize active learning techniques as Think, Pair, Share, Composite, Group, Move, or Lead and discuss how to implement activities in each category, along with advice on creating engaging, effective, and equitable…

This paper is a discussion of the concept 'student active forms of learning'. It aims not at conclusions, but at a perspicuous representation--a map for future navigation and understanding of the concept. From the perspective of philosophy of education, I characterize and discuss issues relating to student active learning in the paper. The context…

This article describes an exercise for a physical laboratory experiment designed to enable physical geography students to practice transferable quantitative skills through inquiry-based learning. The exercise is a deliberately simplified physical model of storm-driven coastal overwash typical of low-lying coastal barrier systems. The experiment…

Anaerobic respiration reactions are of fundamental importance to global biogeochemical cycling of elements. Yet, the idea that cellular respiration can occur not only in the absence of oxygen but also involve the oxidation of inorganic substrates (e.g., AsO[subscript 3 superscript 3-], Fe[superscript 2+], H[subscript 2], H[subscript 2]S,…

The growth in active learning classrooms represents a major shift in the pedagogy and built environment of higher education. While a robust literature exists to discuss the development, use, and evaluation of these innovative learning spaces, the practical considerations of managing innovative learning spaces has not received the same level of…

I propose a model of the scholarship of teaching and learning that builds on and at the same time extends previous work. This article revisits the idea of inquiry as a collaborative social practice enriched by critical reflection and critical self-reflection on assumptions, making a case that among the various functions of inquiry (e.g.,…

Being a teacher or a student in a class with a large enrollment can be intimidating. Often, teachers view comforts that are common to small classes as unattainable in a larger class, including knowing students' names, using active learning, employing group work, and creating group discussion. Students in large classes may find that the class size…

This article illustrates the potential for hackathons to serve as an innovative educational tool in addressing the underrepresentation of minority communities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Using Merced, California--a region recognised for its agricultural economy, socioeconomic disparities, and diverse…

Peer tutoring is a practice often used in higher education settings to create an extended learning environment for students, a space beyond the classroom and outside the teacher-student dynamic. Peer tutors are students who are "at a similar level of educational achievement as the students with whom they are working" (Sanford, 2021, p.…

An active-learning approach was employed in a project for our chemistry major students on the synthesis of biodiesel (BD) from an Amazon region oil. The project, involving activities in class and in the laboratory, was given during 8 weeks of the spring semester of 2022. The students were asked about their previous contact with the synthesis and…

We present a classroom exercise developed to teach the tools of determining order quantities and reorder points for inventory management. This exercise presents the students with an inventory management scenario but only provides a portion of the data that are required to set order quantities and reorder points. The activity is a type of…

I explore some facts about the area, position, etc. of the Steiner ellipse using GeoGebra and numerical analysis. Students can use these for mathematical inquiry.