Industry and authors of 21st Century Skill Frameworks are calling for student proficiency in creativity, problem-solving, innovation, collaboration, and communication skills. This project involved 13 fifth grade gifted students in inventing products for a specified audience with a set of given materials, time limit, and topic constraints. The…

In this article, the author describes a group project to create student-generated podcasts on economics topics. This project provides an innovative opportunity for students to demonstrate proficiency in skills required for the undergraduate economics major and valued in the professional marketplace. Results of a student self-assessment survey on…

Visualizing the chemical structure and dynamics of particles has been challenging for many students; therefore, various visualizations and tools have been used in chemistry education. For science educators, it has been important to understand how students visualize and represent particular phenomena--i.e., their mental models-- to design more…

This study aims to discuss the issues of integrating e-books into science teaching by preservice elementary school teachers. The study adopts both qualitative and quantitative research methods. In total, 24 preservice elementary school teachers participated in this study. The main sources of research data included e-books produced by preservice…

This article discusses a study that utilized a practitioner research approach to professional learning (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) that used student-created digital photo stories combined with focused teacher conversations guided by the NOT-ICE Teacher Discussion Protocol (Author, 2016) to explore why classroom teachers sometimes fail to…

More than 15 years ago, Martorella (1997) asked what has now become a seminal question in the field of social studies and technology; that is, "Which way to the sleeping giant?" (p. 511). He suggested a number of roles that technology can play in the social studies classroom. Although these roles are certainly relevant in 2014, the roles…

We sometimes struggle with the question of whether our primary goal is for students to recall or understand answers to questions, or for students to do science and improve their "scientific temper". This article describes how an enquiry-based laboratory experiment was carried out in which the stress was on the latter. The students…

As part of an evolutionary approach to extending and enhancing the online learning experience for adult students in the LMS-based online college courses that I teach, I have been introducing learning activities that use social media and mobile devices. However, realizing that student adoption of mobile devices with data plans such as smartphones…

In the context of a 10-day summer camp makerspace experience that employed design-based learning (DBL) strategies, the purpose of this descriptive case study was to better understand the ways in which children use visualization skills to negotiate design as they move back and forth between the world of nondigital design techniques (i.e., drawing,…

The purpose of this qualitative research was to examine how graduate students at one institution used personal iPads to support their educational needs. This study specifically addressed the questions: What do graduate students describe as the important educational benefits of their iPads? In what ways are graduate students using iPads to study…

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 green chemistry course taught at Westminster College (PA) incorporates nontraditional teaching techniques and texts to educate future chemists about the importance of using green chemistry principles. The course is designed to introduce green chemistry concepts and demonstrate their inherent necessity by discussing historical missteps by the…

In two studies, we investigated how learning strategies can support learning from multimedia. In the first study, 112 students learned from a web-based learning environment. On the basis of a strategy, one group of students took typewritten notes. The second group of students wrote a summary. Producing typewritten notes did not benefit learning…

This paper documents how a unit of student-designed games can create a more meaningful version of physical education (PE) for disengaged students, a version that enhances the educational legitimacy of the subject matter by affording it worth in and of itself rather than being justified for other, extrinsic or instrumental reasons. Furthermore, it…

The purpose of the current comparative multiple-case study was to understand graduate students' perceptions of the collaborative construction of course assignments. Data were gathered from the graduate student interviews, class observations, and relevant student artifacts. With this collected data, six case studies were generated. The study…