In this article, the author introduces Birka, a strategic trading game for high school economics students in either regular or advanced placement classes. For the game, students assume the role of Vikings who have returned to the medieval outpost of Birka to trade the loot from villages they have plundered. Playing cards represent the loot:…

E-learning and Internet-based distance learning are the latest revolution in higher education. The combination of reasonably priced hardware, readily available bandwidth, and the perception that traditional face-to-face education is not cost effective have driven many educators and administrators to incorporate web-based components into their…

ICT has the capability to transform the way pupils understand and learn mathematics. When used with sensitivity and careful planning, it can act as a catalyst, contributing to a stimulating classroom climate which can bring mathematics alive. This paper takes a fresh and critical look at the use of ICT in mathematics teaching in Primary schools,…

The study of theory is often a daunting and uninviting, if not terrifying, introduction to sociology courses. Most students do not see theory as helpful intellectual hardware that can facilitate understanding, interpretation and construction of social knowledge. This is true not only in theory courses, but also in many sociology courses including…

This paper presents a teaching methodology involving an independent research project component for use in undergraduate Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy laboratory courses. The proposed project introduces cooperative, active learning in a research context to comparative vertebrate anatomy. This project involves pairs or groups of three students…

Eighty blindfolded healthy female subjects participated in an active and a passive straight-ahead pointing task to study the estimation of the subjective sagittal middle in the presence or absence of an active haptic exploration. Subjects were to point straight-ahead with their left or right index finger starting from different right- or…

Achievement goals and interests are recognized as primary motivators for learning in physical education. The study examined the dynamics of the motivators as associated with organized outside-school physical activity experiences and learning outcomes. Data of achievement goals, personal interest, learning outcomes, and outside-school experiences…

This article reports on the 2004 National Academies Summer Institutes on Undergraduate Education in Biology. The second Summer Institute was held at UW-Madison on August 16-20, 2004. There were three dominant themes of the meeting: (1) active learning--ways to promote interactive student engagement during class in place of standard lectures; (2)…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the transdisciplinary case study (TCS) as a learning framework based on what we call functional socio-cultural constructivism and project-based learning (PBL). In doing so, the paper attempts to illustrate the applicability of TCS to learn competencies and skills necessary to research problems of…

An instructor contemplating a course transformation to incorporate a student-centered learning environment may feel faced with what seems like a high-wire balancing act--a constantly renegotiated compromise between students' legitimate needs for structure, well-understood expectations, and good grades and instructors' foreknowledge that the path…

It is a long and winding road from invention to innovation. Starting from this observation, this paper presents a historical perspective on the capabilities engineers should possess to do their work. The importance of the "communicative competence" involved in creating a social base for innovation is underpinned. We will present a…

The work of Activity 1 of the Thematic Network E4 "Employability through Innovative Curricula" on curriculum development issues has been guided by the intention to contribute to the establishment of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by addressing crucial aspects of harmonisation, compatibility and comparability. In due course the…

Children find learning about history meaningful when teachers find ways to interest them in the subject. A social studies wax museum is one way to bring state or national historical characters to life. It opens up a new world for children and makes history more than a chapter in a textbook. In this article, the authors present the rationale for a…

Total Physical Response Storytelling (TPRS) has enjoyed a tremendous increase of interest in recent years because so many teachers in high schools and colleges are finding that it reinvigorates their German programs. Some even claim that it has saved them. TPRS actually consists of two complementary pedagogical methods: (1) Total Physical Response…

The purpose of this article is to present Sport Education, Tactical Games, and Cooperative Learning as valuable instructional models in physical education. Situated learning is used as a theoretical framework and connection between Sport Education, Tactical Games, and Cooperative Learning. The structures of Sport Education, Tactical Games, and…