The incorporation of scientific inquiry into college classrooms has steadily risen as faculty work to move away from exclusively didactic methods. One type of inquiry structure, the design task, produces a product rather than simply a conclusion. This offers students a context to apply their understanding of content in a tangible way that has…

Remember the time when all you had to do was memorize these five steps: ask a question, formulate a hypothesis, perform experiment, collect data, and draw conclusions? And you received full credit for defining the scientific method. Well, those days are gone. This article discusses why the "scientific method ain't what it used to be." (Contains 2…

Two separate writing-to-learn activities in which students wrote to authentic audiences outside of the instructor were used in a college integrated science course, Science of Water. For the first task, students were asked to write to fourth-grade students, and for the second, students were asked to write to their academic advisor. An overview of…

In this article, the authors describe how they use a strategic planning tool known as SWOT as a framework for case analysis, using it to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of a public works project intended to enhance regional economic development in Tempe, Arizona. Students consider the project in light of a variety of…

Discusses two strategies that provide concrete-thinking students with opportunities to develop and use formal or critical-thinking skills. Describes using task analysis and long-term investigations in the classroom. (YP)