Many lecturers use teacher-centred styles of teaching in large undergraduate mathematics classes, often believing in the effectiveness of such pedagogy. Changing these beliefs about how mathematics should be taught is not a simple process and many academic staff are reluctant to change their ways of lecturing due to tradition and ease. This study…

As has been shown by previous research, students may possess various misconceptions in the area of thermal physics. In order to help them overcome misconceptions observed prior to instruction, we implemented a one-hour lecture-based intervention in their introductory thermal physics course. The intervention was held after the conventional lectures…

Background: Behavioral health services involving multiple systems of care are increasingly being provided in community as well as hospital settings. Residents therefore should be familiar with multiple systems and the role of the psychiatrist in these systems. The authors describe a curriculum incorporating principles of systems-based practice…

This paper describes an application of active learning within two different courses: professional selling and sales management. Students assumed the roles of sales representatives and sales managers for an actual fund-raiser--a golf outing--sponsored by a student chapter of the American Marketing Association. The sales project encompassed an…

Faculty members ("N" = 39) from two universities had their lectures recorded. From these videos, we selected 5-min vignettes centered on eight dimensions of the Teacher Behavior Checklist. Undergraduate students from two universities ("N" = 753) viewed three 5-min video clips of college teachers across various disciplines.…

This study reexamined PowerPoint's potential to enhance traditional pedagogical practices in higher education. The study addressed (1) the conditions under which PowerPoint meets students' needs in typical lecture-based classrooms, (2) whether professors consider PowerPoint-based lectures more effective than lectures supported by material on…

This article recounts the experiences of a team of faculty, graduate students, and instructional technologists facilitating Rhetorical Composing, a writing-focused Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). When first offering the MOOC, we recognized quickly that we needed to emphasize the global makeup of our learning cohort to foster a stronger sense of…

Epistemologies were measured across two separate lecture sections of introductory algebra-based physics at UC Davis. Remarkable differences in epistemologies, as measured by the MPEX II survey were noted with one section's students (section A) showing significantly better gains in almost all epistemological categories than the other (section…

The paper by Wilson and Moore (this volume), based on the Messick Lecture delivered in 2006 at the annual Language Testing Research Colloquium in Melbourne, may present a familiar challenge to some language testers: of reading outside one's comfort zone. The distinctive character of language testing lies in its combination of two primary fields of…

A key question in physics education is the effectiveness of the teaching methods. A curriculum that has been investigated at the University of Central Florida (UCF) over the last two years is the use of particular elements of The Physics Suite. Select sections of the introductory physics classes at UCF have made use of Interactive Lecture…

We describe an intensive course that integrates graduate and continuing education focused on the development and scale-up of chromatography processes used for the recovery and purification of proteins with special emphasis on biotherapeutics. The course includes lectures, laboratories, teamwork, and a design exercise and offers a complete view of…

Motivating college students is challenging. Professors must be energetic, enthusiastic, and current in their field. Typically, once a college student selects a major, the motivation to be successful within that discipline is more intrinsic based on interest associated with the major. However, undecided majors who are enrolled in baccalaureate…

Recent experimental evidence indicates that the ability of adults to tolerate milk, cheese, and other lactose-containing dairy products is an autosomal dominant trait that co-evolved with dairy farming in Central Europe about 7,500 years ago. Among persons of European descent, this trait is strongly associated with a C to T substitution at a…

This study reports from a pre-service teacher's online learning and assessment activity on determining variability of two graphical artefacts. Using a critical-analytical perspective to data, the present study indicates that the prospective teachers surveyed showed awareness of relevant subject specific operators and methods; however, these seem…

This study investigates the effects of using interactive computer animations based on predict-observe-explain (POE) as a presentation tool on primary school students' understanding of the static electricity concepts. A quasi-experimental pre-test/post-test control group design was utilized in this study. The experiment group consisted of 30…