The author explains how using creative assignments reinforces invention, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills in undergraduate health administration students. While several studies look at the use of creative assignments to help students develop these skills, few studies exist on their use in health administration. In addition, the use of…

School leaders' resilience is best built as a collective effort, write Soraya Sablo Sutton and Nate Gong. The "Change Makers" program at UC Berkeley's Principal Leadership Institute gave school leaders across California the opportunity to work together to solve problems of practice and build their collective resilience--a key to…

This design case describes the implementation of the Human-centered Design process, developed by the world leading design firm IDEO and Stanford d. school. The process describes the technology integration onto a teaching credential program course at a university in Central California. It reports the thought process to adopting HCD in the course…

Challenging mathematics problems were posed as a substantial part of homework in an elective combinatorics course. The intent was to encourage undergraduate students' exploration as well as develop their technical writing skills. The bulk of students' grades on these problems rested on a three-page reflective write-up using a rubric on…

Issues in society such as immigration and racial inequality threaten to derail classroom discussions. Likewise, issues in higher education such as general education (GE) reform threaten to obstruct faculty committee discussions. We want students to engage in classroom discussions through a comprehensive exploration of issues, ideas, and events…

Reasoning and problem solving are both critical acts in mathematics learning. The author has met many teachers who tell her they would love to highlight them more but feel they cannot because of the pressures of content coverage, pacing guides, and district tests. In this article, she describes a teaching intervention that highlighted problem…

Perovskite solar cells have garnered exponential research interest due to their facile fabrication, solution processability, and low cost. However, there have been limited efforts to integrate this class of materials into the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Therefore, we designed an integrated laboratory experiment in our upper-division…

The Palo Alto Art Center sought a solution to the challenge that loyal family audiences, visiting weekly for art studio classes, rarely visit the contemporary art exhibition galleries. This article relates the experience of using the human-centered design process, often called Design Thinking, as the methodology to create a solution for family…

With the goal of improving student success, the chancellor of the California State University (CSU) system issued an executive order that required all CSU campuses to eliminate remedial math courses as of Fall 2018 and place all first-year students into appropriate General Education (GE) mathematics/quantitative reasoning courses. The Mathematics…

This article proposes that in addition to training teams of students to succeed in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, the contest and the preparation for competition can be successfully used as a framework to teach an auxiliary skill set to undergraduate STEM majors through workshop-style modules. The skills emphasized are collaboration across…

Some of the most effective innovations in education have allowed fundamental changes to how individual students are being taught and assessed. Personalized learning models tailor learning to individual needs, accommodating students with diverse learning styles.

Many principal supervisors in the United States work in relative isolation and experience no professional development designed to support them. Over the past four years, the role of principal supervisor in Long Beach Unified School District in California has shifted from compliance and at-a-distance supervision practices to a deeply rooted…

Creative Youth Development (CYD) is a long-standing practice that fuels students' potential by intentionally integrating creative skill-building, inquiry and expression with positive youth development principles. In CYD programs, young people create original work through arts experiences and apply their creative skills to solve problems. These…

Problem solving spans all grade levels and content areas, as evidenced by this compilation of projects from schools across the United States. In one project, high school girls built a solar-powered tent to serve their city's homeless population. In another project, 4th graders explored historic Jamestown to learn about the voices lost to history.…

A course is described where students are engaged in an inquiry-based quarter-long research project to synthesize a known pharmaceutical target. Students use literature search engines, such as Reaxys and SciFinder, and the primary chemical literature as resources to plan and perform the synthesis of their pharmaceutical target. Through this…