With increased frequency, teacher education programs require candidates to engage in practice-based research capstones (e.g., Lattimer, 2012; Mule, 2006). Yet, experience provides evidence that newly credentialed teachers regularly disregard the practice of teacher inquiry immediately after graduation, prompting the authors to ask, "how can…

Specific acts of problem solving with rates and ratios were interpreted using a journey metaphor derived from Skemp's (1979) construct of director systems. To successfully undertake a problem solving journey a learner must recognise their starting place (present state), have a sense of destination (goal state), and co-ordinate sub-routes along the…

Though Linda Adler-Kassner and Peggy O'Neill claim that ethical writing assessment models "must be designed and built collaboratively, with careful attention to the values and passions of all involved, through a process that provides access to all," college students have not typically been included in scholarly conversations about…

Writing is often used as a tool for learning. However, empirical support for the benefits of writing-to-learn is mixed, likely because the literature conflates diverse activities (e.g., summaries, term papers) under the single umbrella of writing-to-learn. Following recent trends in the writing-to-learn literature, we focus on the underlying…

Asking students to write at the end of class is a familiar strategy (Angelo and Cross 1993), and it can be done in many ways. Students might focus on the day's lecture--What key idea(s) did they learn? What was confusing? What questions remain unanswered? Or they might look ahead--What are their preconceptions of the next topic? Those…

Frequently in Management Science courses, instructors focus primarily on teaching students the mathematics of linear programming models. However, the ability to discuss mathematical expressions in business terms is an important professional skill. The authors present an analysis of student abilities to discuss management science concepts through…

In the writing classroom, collaborative learning often takes the form of coauthoring, peer workshops, or critique sessions. While these are useful, what other active-learning approaches might be effective, particularly in light of the range of media with which students are increasingly familiar? World building--creation of an…

In calibration tasks students assess exemplar texts using criteria against which their own work will be assessed. Typically, these tasks are used in the context of training for peer assessment. Little research has been conducted on the benefits of calibration tasks, such as benchmarking, as learning opportunities in their own right. This paper…

This paper describes the long-term re-development of an introductory graduate research methods course. The initial design is presented, followed by the two re-design phases. Phase 2 introduced additional inquiry-based strategies such as concept mapping and multiple levels of peer collaboration. Phase 3 incorporated competency-based techniques as…

This study begins with the assumption that visual and related literacies are essential frameworks to foster not only students' learning of visual communication principles, but also 21st century skills such as creative problem solving and self-directed learning. We focus on assignment directions as a particular instructional component. In contrast…

This paper presents the use of a debate in an online asynchronous social policy course. Debate is frequently used as an instructional strategy in higher education, but little is known about the use of this tool in an online learning environment. Participants (N = 36) completed an online debate assignment, and both qualitative (reflection papers)…

Teaching with cases, especially at universities where cases are not a regular part of the curriculum, poses challenges for both faculty and students. The results in this research present an effective and manageable method to introduce the case analysis process and to facilitate written case analysis for both students and faculty. Experiment 1…

Faced with diminished faculty resources and increased student enrolment from 2010 to 2017, we sought to use blended learning to achieve active learning in a large c.400-student introductory geography class. Working iteratively over seven years and eight classes and using smart classrooms, better timetabling, experimentation with peer review and…

This paper analyses the tasks allotted to students, featuring two thematic units in the 6th grade Geography textbook published in 2018 by the Didactic and Pedagogic Publishing House Ltd., Bucharest and used in the schools in Romania during the 2018-2019 school year. After a brief analysis of the textbook and its lesson structure, we studied the…

Self-reflection assignments were used and assessed in an undergraduate kinetics course. The assignments involved essays where students were prompted to evaluate their proficiency in professional, non-technical skills guided by a self-evaluation rubric, which includes a rating scheme for 10 non-technical skills. The students set goals and tracked…