This research examined the role of a first-year seminar course in promoting international student learning and academic transition. Through interviews with international students representing different countries and majors, the author investigated how the course can best be designed and taught to overcome the common learning barriers encountered…

This study aimed to identify which aspects of online instruction are most and least effective for promoting learning in a cohort-based doctoral program. Four doctoral program alumni and a professor who participated in the inaugural online doctoral program at a medium-sized mid-Atlantic university conducted the study. The researchers used data from…

Diversity courses in higher education often seek to deepen understanding of the systematic advantages associated with dominant group membership, such as white privilege. Most pedagogical studies of privilege awareness examine the impact of full-length diversity courses on white privilege awareness (Case, 2007; Kernahan & Davis, 2009; Lawrence…

The authors present a model for program-wide assessment of the effectiveness of writing instruction in a chemistry laboratory course. This model, which involves collaboration between faculty from chemistry, the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program, and the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, is based on several theories and…

This mixed-methods research study compared the level of community of inquiry (CoI) in online graduate classes that use web conferencing (WC) compared to those that do not. This study also investigated students' perceptions of Teaching Presence (TP), Social Presence (SP), and Cognitive Presence (CP). The authors found that students had…

Russell Tufts University This study examines the potential of designing and teaching online courses to prompt university faculty members to reflect on the essence of good teaching, and as a result reconsider their beliefs concerning effective pedagogy. A phenomenological investigation was conducted based on interviews with six long-time university…

Many instructors seek to improve student engagement, but determining how to achieve student engagement can be complex and complicated. The authors sought to explore how the implementation of active-learning strategies in undergraduate history courses at a metropolitan community college using graphic organizers and group discussion impacted student…

This study examined the characteristics of effective teaching as perceived by undergraduate adjunct faculty members in a large proprietary university. Three factors were identified through an exploratory factor analysis: Regard for the Student, Instructor Competence, and Instructional Proficiency. The author concludes that additional studies are…

This study documents the effects of service-learning as it was introduced and brought to scale in an introductory undergraduate course in Reading Foundations for students seeking to become early and middle childhood education teachers. Participants included multiple cohorts of students in multiple instantiations of the course taught with and…