Graduate employability remains a key talking point in higher education despite the contested nature of the construct and the myriad of factors that influence an individual's capacity to gain employment. Universities are still positioned to produce graduates who can contribute to society and the economy through work. Students are similarly…

There are multi-faceted, invisible layers within a writer that impact the writer's processes. Since these layers are not necessarily brought to conscious awareness or made visible, however, the writing process contains unintentional influencers. I forward these notions to argue for intentional pedagogical practices that not only consider ideas of…

Expanding information related to environmental degradation is one potential approach to enhance students' environmental literacy and awareness (ecoliterate). This research investigates the relationship between students' skills in writing popular text-based articles and their ecological literacy. A quasi-experimental research design was employed…

This study focused on the use of anticipation guides (AG) as a reading strategy to support science reading and explored the level of students' scientific written arguments as a result. An AG consists of four components that address the topic of the reading activity: statements about the content, what I think, what the texts say, and evidence in…

Expectations of how theory, empirical material, and methods should be dealt with in academic writing has not always been explicitly communicated to students. Due to a heterogeneity in student populations enrolled in higher degree courses worldwide, diversity in academic writing practices has increased. This paper explores academic writing…

In introductory math courses such as precalculus, students often have difficulty with assignments that require explanations or synthesizing knowledge. When students receive low scores on such assignments, instructors often wish to help students understand the material they struggled with. A common strategy is to allow the students to revise and…

College faculty often struggle with getting their students to read assigned materials. Even if students do read, they may not read closely or critically. Not only does the lack of effective reading undermine understanding, but it also hampers class discussions and engagement. To promote close and critical reading in a required, upper-division…

Data visualizations play a crucial role in communicating patterns in quantitative data, making data visualization literacy a key target of STEM education. However, it is currently unclear to what degree different assessments of data visualization literacy measure the same underlying constructs. Here, we administered two widely used graph…

The purpose of this article is to present the author's anecdotal findings from using a grade defense assignment as a supplemental aspect of an ePortfolio assignment. This is not a full research study, but the author did a few semesters of testing with the assignment before implementing the grade defense in all sections of the University Seminar…

Business law can be a daunting course for today's college students, as they confront what feels like a new language in each content area. This article introduces a semester-long activity that provides faculty with a tool to integrate real-world activities into the business law curriculum to help students connect theory with real-world application.…

This article describes pedagogical practices that support deeper learning within an academic program. An assignment is presented that simulates the post-graduate challenge of incorporating soft skills with discipline knowledge. The assignment tasks students with investigating a new problem or opportunity using information from a variety of…

It can be difficult to find ways to motivate students while teaching a physics course for non-physics students. Students come to class with many different attitudes and preconceptions, some of which are detrimental to their learning. As physics educators, we strive for student engagement and motivation in course material no matter what type of…

Student motivation within a STEM course is dependent on their perceived relevance and utility of the topics learned. This paper presents an Informative Utility Value Intervention (IUVI) designed to promote perceptions of utility. The IUVI was designed as a series of assignments for general chemistry students in large lecture courses, but the…

The article moves away from the traditional architectural basic design education methods and approaches it within the framework of the discipline of educational sciences and learning models. The multi-layered education structure transforms into a new learning field under the guidance of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy, which proposes a course schedule…

Students hold foundational assumptions that interact with information they are introduced to in college. By learning to identify, assess, and restructure these foundational ideas, students' ability to acquire topical knowledge improves. This article presents a format for teaching students how to evaluate their beliefs through four levels of…