Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether or not there are differences between college students in Alabama and Hawaii based on three questions: are students concerned about the present/future? What do students know about sustainability? Who is responsible for sustainability? Design/methodology/approach: Two approaches were used to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to prepare for a campus sustainability audit at the main campus of Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Design/methodology/approach: An inductive, qualitative approach was undertaken with data comprised of analyses of key stakeholder interviews, a review of literature, and a systematic collation…

This article considers the rationale for embedding research and enquiry skills early in the undergraduate geography curriculum and for making these skills explicit to students. A survey of 52 international geography faculty identified critical thinking, framing research questions, reflectivity and creativity as the most challenging research skills…

This paper reviews the opportunities and challenges for re-framing the purpose, process, product and assessment of final-year geography dissertations. It argues that the academic centralities of critical thinking, analysis, evaluation, effective communication and independence must be retained, but that the traditional format limits creativity and…

Learning is a developmental journey, and geography curriculum plays a key role in supporting student progression. In this article, we argue that the concept of "self-authorship" is a useful guiding principle in supporting curriculum revision and reform. A series of international case studies illustrate how self-authorship can be enacted in…

We take a fresh look at geography curricula and their appropriateness to the demands of the 21st century. We reflect on the purpose, content and relevance of undergraduate geography curricula in an age of "supercomplexity". Geography curricula, by their nature, are varied and multiple, with different countries often privileging different types of…

This paper provides a review of the practices and tensions informing approaches to professional development for early career academic geographers who are teaching in higher education. We offer examples from Britain, Canada, Nigeria and the USA. The tensions include: institutional and departmental cultures; models that offer generic and…

We define synergy, explain its importance within the context of rapidly changing academia, and provide examples of how geographic educators have used creative instructional approaches to create synergies. Both the content of geography and some of the instructional approaches used by geographic educators support the discipline's ability to deliver…

University-community partnerships offer synergistic spaces for communities to address difficulties and universities to meet their missions. Geographers are well positioned to participate in these partnerships, owing to the discipline's integrative nature, spatial perspectives and analytic approaches, and its attention to social and environmental…

Effective teaching about many of the geographical issues now confronting Earth and humanity requires collective approaches and shared solutions. It follows, therefore, that there is a need to better understand the basis of and process for sustaining successful international collaboration among geography educators. This paper first examines some of…

This article considers the application of selected components of self-regulated learning (SRL; Zimmerman 2000) to student-content interaction in online learning and distance education (DE). In particular we discuss how, when interacting with electronically enhanced text, students must carefully employ self-regulated learning strategies that…

Distance education is defined, the various approaches for effective research are summarized, and the results of major research reviews of the field are explained in this article. Additionally, two major areas of research are included--research on barriers to the adoption of distance education and research summaries that explain and support best…

In this special issue, I bring together two studies to provide a comprehensive overview on diverse and interactive instructional methods aimed to facilitate higher levels of learning. One study explored the effects of group interaction using different instructional strategies focusing on the learning "process" using the Community of Inquiry…

This study examined the relationships among question types and levels and students' subsequent responses/interactions in online discussion forums. Question prompts were classified both by type, as outlined by Andrews ("POD Q J Prof Organ Dev Net Higher Education" 2(34):129-163, 1980), and by levels of critical thinking, as outlined by Bloom…

After a discussion of the state of both misaligned and informative online and distance education research, the authors in this special issue (hereafter called the collective) extract evidence-based principles about strategies that work. Both are addressed in this article. First, their criticisms centered on the value of comparative research. Those…