To improve climate education in an introductory weather and climate course, an active-learning lab was developed around a climate decision support system. The Climate Analysis and Visualization for the Assessment of Species Status (CAnVAS) tool allows individuals to view various climate variables and select a particular location and species to…

Acid-base physiology is widely recognized as one of the most conceptually challenging topics in undergraduate education due to its interdisciplinary nature and the necessity for both mechanistic and integrative understanding. This article presents a structured, system-based teaching framework designed to enhance student comprehension of acid-base…

Phylogenetic tree diagrams are commonly found in introductory biology curricula and represent the evolutionary relationships of organisms. Tree-thinking, or the ability to accurately interpret, use, and generate these phylogenetic representations, involves a challenging set of skills for students to learn. Although many introductory biology…

Background: Engineering education traditionally emphasizes technical skills, sometimes at the cost of under-preparing graduates for the real-world engineering context. In recent decades, attempts to address this issue include increasing project-based assignments and engineering design courses in curricula; however, a skills gap between education…

The need to encourage critical thinking and academically engage nursing students in a clinical environment compels faculty use of assorted teaching strategies, including concept mapping and flipped learning. Though nurse educators encourage both strategies, concurrent use of both methods in clinical teaching is rare. Thus, this study examined the…

In comparison with traditional lectures, active learning methods have the potential to foster learner agency and consequently raise academic performance. However, these methods are often applied with little knowledge about their effectiveness. In this study, we introduced two concept maps in an undergraduate cell biology course, to investigate…

There are increasing calls for the use of research-based teaching strategies to improve engagement and learning in engineering. In this innovation paper, we detail the application of research-based teaching strategies in a computer programming focused biomedical engineering module. This four-week, one-credit undergraduate biomedical engineering…

Over 40 years of research, concept maps have shown that they are beneficial for learning. However, much of this research has been conducted in laboratory settings. Although there are a few studies conducted in the classroom, there is little understanding of the instructional efficacy of using different types of concept maps. In a between-subjects…

Teaching a business program capstone class presents a double challenge, requiring the educator to integrate different functional areas of business and evaluate student learning. This paper discusses concept maps as an active learning assessment tool in teaching a strategic management capstone course. Concept maps are used to meaningfully depict…

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected educational systems worldwide, forcing them to abruptly shift from face-to-face to online teaching and learning. This case study illustrates how a traditional lecture-based activity for undergraduate students in a Management of Health Service Organizations program was transformed into an…

The ability to work with people from different disciplinary is a skill for workplace and it is an important skill for teachers too. This study helps gain a better understanding of how engaging in interdisciplinary design teams impacts student teachers' self-efficacy through the use of collaborative concept maps. A statistically significant…

This paper proposes several activities that encourage self-learning in engineering courses. For each activity, the context and the pedagogical issues addressed are described emphasizing strengths and weaknesses. Specifically, this work describes and implements five activities, which are: questionnaires, conceptual maps, videos, jigsaw and…

The adoption of active learning instructional practices in college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses has been shown to result in improvements in student learning, contribute to increased retention rates, and reduce the achievement gap among different student populations. Descriptions of active learning strategies…

Following collaboration between two chemistry lecturers and an academic developer an attempt was made to enhance the learning of students within a chemistry module through the adaptation of the delivery of content material. This paper reports a piece of practitioner led research which considered how effective the approach developed was upon the…

This paper reports on the metaphors that 36 third-year university mathematics education students have about mathematics. These metaphors were investigated through a questionnaire with five open-ended items. An inductive analysis of the students' metaphors for mathematics indicated that students had well developed and complex metaphors about…