An increasing number of introductory physics courses are seeking to incorporate "authentic practices," and a large area of focus in this trend is the incorporation of computational problems into the curriculum. These problems offer students an opportunity to engage with the programming practices and numerical problem-solving methods used…

Physiology instructors often are faced with the challenge of providing informative and educationally stimulating laboratories while trying to design them in such a way that encourages students to be actively involved in their own learning. With many laboratory experiments designed with simplicity and efficiency as the primary focus, it is…

Since "A Nation at Risk" was released in the 1980s, standards-based reform has been the most dominant trend in American educational policy, and the No Child Left Behind Act pushed the trend further by requiring states to develop rigorous curriculum standards. Though much has been said about these new standards, less has been said about…

Students at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, can now take an innovative biology course in which an integrated, interdisciplinary, problem-based approach is used--one that the scientific community itself is promoting. The first course in a four-semester sequence, Biology 123--The Living World: Concepts and Connections--explores real-world…

This paper presents the development and implementation of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) in an engineering thermodynamics course at Kettering University. In this project, the thermodynamics course was restructured as modules presenting practical applications first, whereas principles were introduced just-in-time and as encountered. Theoretical…