Educational systems must equip students with skills to thrive in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments. Creativity is an essential skill for both success and resiliency in such an environment, but not all curricula explicitly prioritize creativity skills. Thomas Jefferson University's Creativity Core Curriculum has proactively…

Undergraduate retention, graduation, and postgraduation success are greater when students engage in undergraduate research. This article describes a grassroots, faculty-initiated effort to increase the number of students who received research experiences at a large, urban institution. Peer course coaches, students who had previously taken a course…

Interest in service learning has increased in the past two decades, partly due to recent accumulation of knowledge about its beneficial outcomes to participants and society. This manuscript describes a small group basic communication course taught in a service learning format at a small liberal arts college. Qualitative comments as well as…

The purpose of this study was to examine undergraduate students' perceptions of the benefits of a college reading and study skills course. Researchers have found that even with increased emphasis on college readiness, many students continue to enter college unprepared for the rigorous academic expectations they may face. With this in mind, this…

Graduate teaching assistants (TAs) play an important role in undergraduate programs in our Earth Science Department. A course on teaching and learning was developed to train graduate students in student-centered pedagogy, in a discipline-specific context. The training course has been running for a decade and has been taken by over 100 graduate…

We describe interim results of an ongoing longitudinal pedagogical study investigating the efficacy of the Honours Integrated Science Program (iSci). We describe the pedagogical methods we use to prompt research skill development in a model from instructor-dependence to independent original research. We also describe a tool we use to help students…

Institutions of higher education invest time and money directing cocurricular programs that allow students to formally engage in the local community. Community-service learning is one type of program recently dubbed "high impact" (Kuh, 2008). However, it is not enough to simply refer to a program as "high impact": it is…

Peer-led team learning (PLTL), specifically the model known as 'Workshops', has been shown to contribute positively and significantly to student success in STEM courses across subjects (Gosser et al., 2001). Our research adds to the SOTL literature describing the effectiveness of Workshops by reporting on the changes in student leaders. We examine…

With institutions of many types embracing the rich possibilities offered by course-based learning communities, it is important for programs to consider how they might best prepare students for success in those courses. Key to this work is identifying the particular skills needed and creating opportunities to introduce students to those skills…

International student enrollment in the U.S. higher education system has recently experienced profound growth. This research examines leadership-oriented differences between international and domestic students and focuses on their growth in capacity associated with participation in co-curricular leadership programs. Similarly-sized gains emerged…

An innovative educational technology called interactive virtual and physical manipulatives (VPM) is developed to improve students' spatial skills. With VPM technology, not only can students touch and play with real-world physical manipulatives in their hands but also they can see how the corresponding virtual manipulatives (i.e., computer…

Aim/Purpose: To prepare students with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills in the field of wireless communications. Background: Teaching wireless communications and networking is not an easy task because it involves broad subjects and abstract content. Methodology: A pedagogical method that combined lectures, labs, assignments, exams,…

Concerns are growing in many countries, including Ireland, regarding an inadequate number of graduates to meet workforce needs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. These graduate deficiencies are the result of low student uptake of STEM subjects and courses at post-primary and tertiary level education. Low uptake is…

This paper aims to compare the impact on the development of transversal skills, such as self-esteem, of virtual and physical exchanges. This is done by comparing the Europe on the Edge programme to the results of the Erasmus Impact Study. In doing so it fills the need that has been expressed in the telecollaboration field to study the impact of…

Teaching offensive security (ethical hacking) is becoming a necessary component of information security curricula with a goal of developing better security professionals. The offensive security components extend curricula beyond system defense strategies. This paper identifies and discusses the learning outcomes achieved as a result of hands-on…