Starting with the premise that better assessment leads to more informed decisions about student learning, we investigated the factors that lead to assessment improvement. We used "meta-assessment" (i.e., evaluating the assessment process) to identify academic programs in which the assessment process had improved over a two-year period.…

In this article the author, Rachel Rimmer, explores how improvisation can facilitate skills that are transferable to other areas of dance practice, enabling different areas of study to complement each other. The experimental forum of improvisation as an alternative method of learning technique is considered, contemplating the value of this…

Kinaesthetic learning activities (KLAs) can be a valuable pedagogical tool for physics instructors. They have been shown to increase engagement, encourage participation and improve learning outcomes. This paper details several KLAs developed at Rutgers University for inclusion in an instructional unit about semiconductors, p-n junctions and solar…

Previous research has shown the difficulty of enhancing students' approaches to learning, in particular the deep approach, through student-centred teaching methods such as problem- and case-based learning. This study investigates whether mixed instructional methods combining case-based learning and lectures have the power to enhance students'…

Emotional intelligence is a relatively new academic discipline that began forming in the early 1990s. Currently, emotional intelligence is used in academia and in business as a new intelligence quotient. This research study investigates how Senior Student Affairs Officers' use their emotional intelligence ability during critical incidents. The…

This chapter provides the reader with literature and resources for conducting leadership assessment in collegiate recreation and athletics. Current practices and strategies are shared.

This article examines "raskol" (schism or split) as an archetype of Russian culture and looks at possible aspects for its social and pedagogical study. It proposes an interpretation of "raskol" as a phenomenon that has manifested itself in a variety of different ways over the course of Russia's history. The author poses the…

Social media provide new means and opportunities for learning that are consistent with major tenets of both social and cognitive constructivism, and extend the process of learning and meaning construction to more diverse communities and universally accessible shared activities that are jointly and concurrently engaged in by both peers and experts.

Under which approach do pupils attain more optimally, a logical versus a psychological procedure of instruction? Pupils do need to achieve well in a world of science. Science is all around us and pupils need to understand various principles and laws of science. Thus, teachers in the school curriculum must choose carefully objectives for pupil…

In the second edition of their influential book "New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Classroom Learning," Lankshear and Knobel argued that engagement with these practices was "largely confined to learners' lives in spaces outside of schools." That was nearly 10 years ago, and in some respects, very little has changed. In…

This paper illustrates a TI N-Spire .tns file created by the author for generating continued fraction representations of real numbers and doing arithmetic with them. The continued fraction representation provides an alternative to the decimal representation. The .tns file can be used as tool for studying continued fractions and their properties as…

Existing tests of interrater agreements have high statistical power; however, they lack specificity. If the ratings of the two raters do not show agreement but are not random, the current tests, some of which are based on Cohen's kappa, will often reject the null hypothesis, leading to the wrong conclusion that agreement is present. A new test of…

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month's issue describes using formative assessment probes to uncover several ways of thinking about the puzzling discovery of a marine fossil on top of a mountain.

The proposition is challenged that experience and learning are separate. It is argued that all experience is necessarily learning, and that any object of experience may disclose unlimited learnings in both extent and profundity. The implications of these claims are examined for teaching and learning, for the openness of the academy and for social…

In the US, instruction reforms, especially those intended to help teachers move beyond typical teaching practices, have regularly fallen short of aspirations. An important reason for this state of affairs is that reforms, often fail to provide teachers sufficient infrastructure they need to overcome fundamental uncertainties of teaching. Progress…