The Wesleyan Academy and Moravian School in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, recently joined forces with Evergreen Elementary in Fort Lewis, Wash., to collaborate on a research project using My eCoach Online (http://myecoach.com) as the primary medium to share information, post ideas and findings, and develop inquiry projects on 10 topics about water.…

Edward Thorndike may be counted on to say in few words what amounts to a highly complex idea. He once said that, with learning as with any activity, ability must be supplemented by interest or desire. "If we wish to learn a certain thing, we must arouse adequate interest... we must transmute this general wish into an interest that will carry us to…

Describes an art lesson for second-grade students that uses basic shapes to paint pictures of dragons. Discusses how the students created their dragons and lists the art materials needed. Includes a list of learning objectives. (CMK)

This article reviews the findings of a small-scale investigation into the criteria used by a number of SACWG departments for assessing final-year project modules in business and history and other written history assignments. The findings provide the basis for a broader discussion of the issues relating to the formulation and use of assessment…

This article describes a content analysis project initiated in an Introduction to Criminal Justice course. Students were asked to analyze presentations of specific players in the criminal justice system, including criminals, victims, police, and lawyers. Students were then required to compare the media presentation with reality, as derived from…

Greater opportunities exist now for meeting the needs of gifted and talented students than ever before. Even though the Internet is still in its infancy, the depth and breath of available information that it offers make it a versatile and extensive resource for developing talent. While individuals often view the Internet as a giant library, its…

A tool for teaching bioinformatics concepts to information systems majors is described. Biological data are available from numerous sources and a good knowledge of biology is needed to understand much of these data. As the subject of bioinformatics gains popularity among computer and information science course offerings, it will become essential…

This paper examines the problem of studying and comparing student software designs. We propose semantic categorization as a way to organize widely varying data items. We describe how this was used to organize a particular multi-national, multi-institutional dataset, and present the results of this analysis: most students are unable to effectively…

The modern world is undergoing a fundamental transformation characterized by a lot of challenges, dynamism, globalization, and the increasing influence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). These new technologies have implications for all aspects of the society and economy; they are changing the way of doing business, the way of…

Near the conclusion of their final term in the calculus sequence at The United States Military Academy, cadets are given a week long group project. At the end of the week, the project is briefed to their instructors, classmates, and superior officers. From a teaching perspective, the goal is to encapsulate as much of the course as possible in one…

In teaching a course without a textbook, we introduce a project in which students develop their own text. Details of the project, student reactions, benefits to students, and more are discussed. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

The laboratory component of a first-semester general chemistry course for science majors is described. The laboratory involves a semester-long project undertaken in a small-group format. Students are asked to examine whether plants grown in soil contaminated with lead take up more lead than those grown in uncontaminated soil. They are also asked…

Sustainability, enhancement of personal skills, social aspects of technology, management and entrepreneurship are of increasing concern for engineers and therefore for engineering education. In 1996 at Delft University of Technology this led to the introduction of a subject on sustainable entrepreneurship and technology in the course programmes of…

Even in self-organized project-based learning, the instructors' role re-mains critical, especially in the initial orientation provided to the students in order to grasp the educational goals and the various roles they may undertake to achieve them. In this paper we survey a few questions proposed to that purpose in a web-based software engineering…

The Mobius strip, torus, and Klein bottle are used to graphically and analytically illustrate the differences between orientable and non-orientable surfaces. An exercise/laboratory project using the non-orientable Boy surface is included. (Contains 11 figures.)