Building on an initiative of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, Washington State University faculty have worked to develop more effective integrative capstone assignments in ways that support ongoing improvement.

For students to thrive and achieve at high levels, they must be interested and emotionally invested in their learning. Why? Because motivation, or the desire that propels one to do something, leads to engagement, where students are being attentive to their tasks, putting forth positive effort, persisting through challenges, and advancing their…

The study of neuroanatomy imposes a significant cognitive load on students since it includes huge factual information and therefore demands diverse learning strategies. In addition, a significant amount of teaching is carried out through human brain demonstrations, due to limited opportunities for cadaveric dissection. However, reports suggest…

Background: The abrupt transition to virtual language learning environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought considerable challenges to educational practices. In the context of foreign/second language learning and teaching, it has become more difficult to ensure that learners have the necessary engagement and motivation levels along with…

Organic reaction mechanisms are often represented by the electron-pushing formalism and reaction coordinate diagrams. These representations pose a challenge to students because valuable information is encoded within each representation, and students must know how to reason about mechanisms using both. Hence, it is important to understand whether…

This research study of a WAC learning community focuses on instructors' behind-the-scenes decision making about assignment design. Specifically, we show how instructors use direct personal experience--as students, teachers and scholars--to approach writing assignment design, invoking these experiences to discuss the origin of their assignments and…

In recent decades, there has been an increase in literacy education research attending to curriculum inclusive of sexual and gender diversity in secondary classrooms. Although valuable, most of this research has focused on the ideational and representational qualities of curriculum and thus has overlooked the significance of composition and genre.…

Background: Research shows distributed practice enhances learning and skill development, but less is known about the effect on perceptions and attitudes toward the material being learned. Objective: This study examined whether distributed practice could improve performance and attitudes in statistics, a subject that students report finding…

Drawing on critical literacy as a theoretical framework, this paper explores how a children's book writing assignment designed to center the experiences of underrepresented communities in children's literature contributed to shifts in awareness among predominantly White teacher candidates. The study occurred at a large urban university in…

Students in the sciences learn to engage with primary research articles as a fundamental part of their discipline, essential to both writing and research. These sources are difficult to navigate, leading students to use (and misuse) these sources in a variety of complex ways. As instructors and researchers, we are aware of these challenges, but…

While automated feedback is becoming readily accessible to student writers, how students employ resources and strategies to use such feedback remains largely unexplored. Informed by activity theory and the construct of appropriation, this study conceptualizes students' use of automated feedback as social appropriation mediated by resources and…

Exploration of "prior art"--the state of a technology's development, as manifested in literature, documentation, and artifacts--has many benefits for engineering students. It expands their understanding of the design problem, reveals a range of possible solutions, and develops research skills important to professional practice. While…

The Alien Worlds project teaches ethnographic skills using the societies of dystopian, postapocalyptic, and science fiction texts as imagined field sites and targets for analysis. These exercises and assignments, which illustrate principles of qualitative fieldwork, were developed when COVID-19 precautions made it impossible to assign tasks that…

Understanding how to make the world a better place requires interdisciplinary knowledge. Public policy analysis helps policymakers arrive at informed policy decisions. The policy analysis process involves public problem definition and data collection, stakeholder identification, a rationale for government involvement, evaluation criteria,…

This study aims to develop an online-based collaborative project learning model design that can improve students' abilities in developing teaching materials. The method used is research and development. Data collection instruments are questionnaires and rubrics. Data analysis used descriptive statistics. The validation test used the individual…