The intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and the BLM movement led to a historic moment for American society. Illness, death, and civil unrest provided a shared historical experience for all Americans, and provided an opportunity for educators to capitalize on the multitude of teachable moments these historical events provided. For educators, like…

Five years after an initial self-study on my dialogic teaching practices in a teacher preparation course, I conducted a follow up study to see if I grew as a dialogic teacher in the same class. This article describes the a second self-study of my dialogic teaching practices in an English methods course, and compares findings with the initial…

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become a popular tool for worldwide learners. However, a lack of emotional interaction and support is an important reason for learners to abandon their learning and eventually results in poor learning performance. This study applied an integrative framework of achievement emotions to uncover their holistic…

This article presents the results of evaluating a dataset collected with the Community of inquiry (CoI) survey (Arbaugh, The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning 9:1-21, 2008) using Rasch psychometric techniques to evaluate instrument functioning. Data were collected over a two-year period yielding a sample of 704…

The 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has created a vast array of challenges and some benefits that must not be overlooked. Describing the experience of teaching with social anxiety and pulling upon pedagogy about caring instructors, this reflective essay explains how teaching through the pandemic led to the author finding enjoyment in…

We use Taylor's formula with Lagrange remainder to prove that functions with bounded second derivative are rectifiable in the case when polygonal paths are defined by interval subdivisions which are equally spaced. As a means for generating interesting examples of exact arc length calculations in calculus courses, we recall two large classes of…

Existing research identifying common student ideas about forces focuses on students' misunderstandings, misconceptions, and difficulties. In this paper, we characterize student thinking in terms of resources, framing student thinking as continuous with formal physics. Based on our analysis of 2048 written responses to conceptual questions, we…

In this short essay, the author addresses challenges facing higher education in the COVID-19 era and how creativity may serve to transform its future.

Advanced placement (AP) and concurrent enrollment (CE) provide high school students with rigorous coursework and possible college credit. Theoretical modeling predicted students would substitute CE for AP courses conditional on their probability of earning university credit, passing AP tests, and college selectivity despite CE costing more than…

This article chronicles how Introduction to the Study of Religion has become my favorite course to teach. In it, I narrate my process of pedagogical reinvention and syllabus redesign. Framed by professional and personal backstories, I share my pedagogical desires, list some pedagogical cues I took, and articulate pedagogical decisions and…

Successful results of all types of professional activities largely depend on the quality of training. At present, however, the acquired knowledge does not guarantee a university graduate stability of success throughout his/her career. Thus, the concept of lifelong education was gradually formed. From the previously established stereotype…

In 2010, Nolan and Temple Lang proposed "integration of computing concepts into statistics curricula at all levels." The unprecedented growth in data and emphasis on data science has provided an impetus to finally realizing full implementations of this in new statistics and data science programs and courses. We discuss a proposal for the…

The ubiquitous acquisition and generation of data require a reworking of curricula in introductory statistics in tertiary education. We present a renewed curriculum that focuses on scientific thinking, modeling, and simulation-based inference, utilizing R and various R tools such as shiny and learnr apps. We teach statistics from a data-centric…

The classic brachistrochrone problem is standard material in intermediate mechanics. Many variations exist including some accessible to introductory students. While a quantitative solution isn't feasible in introductory classes, qualitative discussions can be very beneficial since kinematics, Newton's laws, energy conservation, and motion along…

This study examines what prior knowledge and misconceptions about evolutionary theory students bring with them into an introductory biological anthropology course. One hundred and fifty-three students completed short, anonymous surveys about evolution on the first day of class before any content was discussed. Of a possible seven points, the…