The article describes a semester-long project that draws on Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" as a resource and over-arching theme for preservice teachers taking a content area literacy course. We examine how preservice teachers learn to connect written texts to content area (disciplinary) literacy and consider ways to prepare them for…

Ecological ideas have been manifested in diverse ways in American high schools since the early twentieth century. Core scientific concepts in ecology--the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment--include adaptations, plant succession, ecosystem ecology, and population ecology. This dissertation argues, however, that there…

The Computer Science Department at Slippery Rock University created a laboratory for its Computer Networks and System Administration and Security courses under relaxed financial constraints. This paper describes the department's experience designing and using this laboratory, including lessons learned and descriptions of some student projects…

Educating for a sustainable future is the imperative of our time. Creative and individual artistic expression helps us all to inform and share with one another. If we hope to fulfill the vision of sustainability as it pertains to environmental, social and economic realities, we must give our students the fluency and the tools to grow into green…

Researching whimsical and spirited artists can inspire new ideas and methods of communicating how art remains a valuable part of people's lives both in and out of the classroom. This instructional resource explores one such contemporary artist who, driven by a curiosity in human interaction, continues to explore the world in fanciful and…

E-learning has seen incredible growth in the first decade of the 21st century. This growth is particularly noticeable in institutions of higher education. Even though distance learning has long been the method by which remote students have obtained course credit through correspondence study, e-learning is popular even among traditional on-campus…

This article discusses a Bachelor of Design honours year typography project in the medium of letterpress. The "Letter-space" project positioned letterpress as a textual, spatial and structural visual language, through which the experiences and meanings of a local urban place were translated, mapped and given form through typographic design. We…

This study describes the objectives, structures, and outcomes of a one-semester, required sociology research capstone course as taught at three institutions. Pre- and postquestionnaires from students, syllabi from instructors, and a random sample of final research papers were analyzed. Results indicate that the main foci of the course are to…

The design of experimental ecological fieldwork is difficult to teach to classes, particularly when protocols for data collection are normally carefully controlled by the class organiser. Normally, reinforcement of the some problems of experimental design such as the avoidance of pseudoreplication and appropriate sampling techniques does not occur…

We developed a protein research project for a one-semester biochemistry lecture class to enhance learning and more effectively train students to understand protein structure and function. During this semester-long process, students select a protein with known structure and then research its structure, sequence, and function. This project…

Students are often encouraged to work together with their classmates, sometimes with other classes, occasionally with kids at other schools, but rarely with kids across the country. In this article the authors describe the Create Your State project, a collaborative nationwide project inspired by the Texas Chair Project wherein the artist, Damien…

In this issue of the Occasional Paper Series describes practices and policies that impact the early schooling of children of immigrants in the United States. The authors consider the intersectionality of young children's lives and what needs to change in order to ensure that race, class, immigration status, gender, and dis/ability can effectively…

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of the Pathways to STEM Initiative (PSI) on students and science teachers and to describe the level of PSI implementation. One group of middle schools participated in PSI, which included project-based science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) coursework; extra-curricular STEM opportunities…

The Model My Watershed (MMW) application, and associated curricula, provides students with meaningful opportunities to connect conceptual understanding of watersheds to real-world decision making. The application uses an authentic hydrologic model, TR-55 (developed by the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service), and real data applied in…

This study aims to compare and evaluate the learning ability and performance differences between two groups of students undergoing project-based learning (PjBL), with one group having prior PjBL experience, while the other group is being freshly exposed to PjBL. More specifically, it examines if there are significant differences in knowledge…