Many first-year university courses are large and content-driven, which can contribute to low student engagement and difficulty involving students in the dynamic, cross-disciplinary nature of inquiry. Learning communities can address these goals, but their implementation often poses logistical challenges, especially in large courses. Here, we apply…

In this article, I describe my experience of preparing and delivering a brand new computing undergraduate course in a new university and in doing so, share how the special institutional push of the active learning pedagogy of the university changed the way I prepared and delivered the course, and ended up transforming my own view of teaching. I…

The "Riga Conclusions" of the European Ministries of Education of 22 June 2015 for the orientation of vocational education and training in Europe are promoting work-based learning as one of five "medium-term deliverables" for the next five years. But: How should and can work-based teaching and learning be designed? Our approach…

Effectively teaching sociological theories to undergraduate students is challenging. Students often enroll in theory courses due to major requirements, not personal interest. Consequently, many students approach the study of theory with anxiety. This study examined the effectiveness of an experiential learning activity designed to teach Karl…

This article identifies homework as an underutilized strategy in physical education. It reviews the benefits associated with the use of homework in the physical education setting, and provides guidelines for the effective implementation of this strategy. The guidelines include practical application examples and define structured active homework…

English teacher Cris Tovani knows from her experiences teaching elementary school that students are naturally curious. But, too often, students are so trained to be question answerers that by the time they reach high school, they no longer form questions of their own and instead focus on trying to figure out what answer the teacher wants. Tovani…

Education is meant to open your mind, but is that what universities are really doing? Rather than fostering open-minded thinking, the format of lecturing, the lack of interaction among students and instructors, and the passive nature of learning are likely producing the opposite, students with closed-minds. The development and implementation of…

In this paper, the author expresses concerns regarding the extensive use of case studies in the college classroom and advises college and university faculties to be more careful in their selection and use of case studies as an effective­-based method of teaching. The author communicates the important role that case studies play in teaching and…

Educators have recommended that the affordances provided by ICTs should be used to promote student-centered constructivist learning. While the actual use of ICT in education has increased, not much change has occurred in terms of the pedagogical practices followed. Information transmission models of teaching are still being followed, albeit with…

In a Montessori preschool classroom, students work independently on tasks that absorb their attention in part because the apparatus are carefully designed to make mistakes directly observable and limit exploration to one aspect or dimension. Control of error inheres in the apparatus itself, so that teacher intervention can be minimal. Inspired by…

Teaching requires the navigation of an intricate terrain of complex and often overlapping issues, many of which extend beyond the classroom setting. Teachers are uniquely placed to influence large numbers of learners beyond the delivery of prescribed curriculum, and therefore need to be particularly careful and aware of their professional ways of…

This article illustrates the synergistic role between practice and theory in evaluation. Using reflective practice, the author reviews her own work as well as the work of other evaluators to illustrate how theory can influence practice and, in turn, how evaluation practice can inform and grow theory, especially evaluation theory. The following…

iPads are increasingly being put in the hands of children in schools and educational contexts, yet there continues to be larger questions about how they fit into the fabric of daily classroom life and what new stories will emerge (de Certeau, 1984, 1984/2000). In this article, we feature vignettes of data from a 2-year government-funded research…

Multiple studies report that Computer Science (CS) instructors face problems on how to integrate visualizations in their teaching. This problem gets compounded for instructors in technology-constrained classrooms that are common in developing countries. In these classrooms, students are not able to interact with visualization directly; instead,…

Intelligent tutoring systems have been developed to help students learn independently. However, students who are poor self-regulated learners often struggle to use these systems because they lack the skills necessary to learn independently. The field of psychology has extensively studied self-regulated learning and can provide strategies to…