Colleges and universities may desire to become more trauma-informed in light of our growing understanding of the impact that trauma can have on student outcomes. However, there has been little research on what strategies and practices colleges and universities should implement to become more trauma-informed. One approach to this work could be to…

First-generation college students comprise a sizable number of the student population in colleges and universities across the nation. As faculty are tasked with teaching and supporting these students in their courses, it is important to consider the alignment of faculty perspectives and the needs of first-generation students. This study explored…

As COVID-19 restrictions are removed, instructors are faced with two questions: should the course be taught online, via mixed-mode, or through traditional methods, and what effect did online instruction have on students in the course in regards regarding enrolled across eight semesters of metabolism courses using traditional, mixed-mode, and…

The growing prevalence of online higher education courses has attracted millions of students, many of whom fall outside the traditional student demographic. This investigative study aims to close the existing knowledge gap about the experiences and preferences of adult asynchronous learners. The study was conducted as a series of semi-structured…

This article reports on a mixed-methods study examining the ways in which faculty and staff engage with the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) at a medium-sized research-intensive university in southern Ontario, Canada. Survey data was collected from fifty-six faculty and staff respondents, along with eight faculty completing follow-up…

To reduce academic dishonesty and strengthen learning outcomes, I adopted in-depth oral examinations as my benchmark and summative assessments in a Human Anatomy & Physiology course taught in an online asynchronous setting. This decision led my students and me down the transformative path of mastery learning. This was a "threshold…

Providing students with opportunities to wrestle with and engage with messy, real-world problems can be challenging in traditional, higher education courses. However, for students in helping and applied professions, engaging with challenging problems in a supportive environment is critical to developing their skills and confidence. This paper…

Graduate programs provide learners with important transitions between exposure to scholarship in their fields and skills application for professional practice. These programs also provide space for continued personal development and campus environment interactions that influence student learning. In this article, we share dialogues focused on…

Students may sometimes benefit from due date extensions due to significant extenuating circumstances. These circumstances, though, may not be supported by documentation as required by university policies. Given this, I implemented a flexible due date policy called the Pause Button (PB) in a 16-week behavioral sciences research methods course.…

The jigsaw technique has been successfully used in classrooms for decades, though less in higher education. Groups are formed with each student having a precise piece of information necessary to complete the assignment. Next, expert groups of students with the same material meet to sharpen their understanding before reforming their initial group…

Students perceive crossword puzzles as enjoyable. In addition to students' perceptions, crossword puzzles actually improve knowledge retention. However, crossword puzzles increased exam scores for some students but not others. Recommendations have been made for students to create puzzles for their classmates to complete with the rationale that…

Epistemic beliefs are one's assumptions about knowledge and knowing. Given the research in educational psychology that established epistemic beliefs as reliable predictors of student success, we devised a pedagogical intervention to improve students' epistemic beliefs. In this study, we examined the effectiveness of the reflective writing task as…

Cyberbullying is a phenomenon increasingly affecting students and faculty in K-12 through higher education systems. Cyberbullying in higher education negatively affects institutions and their respective stakeholders. The consequences range from faculty turnover to student suicide. Research related cyberbullying in higher education in online…

Design thinking is a critical and creative process understood to support innovation and creative idea generation in a wide variety of contexts. Increasingly, it is being used as a pedagogical approach by educators interested in supporting divergent thinking skill development. This study evaluated the effects of the use of design thinking practices…

Professors and students have contradictory views of course reading. Professors believe that reading outside of the classroom is essential in optimizing learning. However, students often find the readings to be time-consuming, not necessary to pass the class, and an option rather than a requirement. We surveyed 449 undergraduate university students…