Objective: To assess the role of body mass index (BMI) and exercise levels in self-perception of critical thinking skills. Participants: Three hundred forty-seven students from an upper-division nutrition class over two consecutive years. Methods: A pre/post survey with a 15-week intervention assessed perceived critical thinking skills in a…

With the goal of increasing the immediacy of the relationship between tenure-track professors and students, science departments in liberal arts colleges may try to arrange their curriculum so that students have the same professor in both the lecture and the lab section of introductory courses. While this goal seems laudable, empirical data are…

Personal response systems, such as clickers, have been widely used to improve the effectiveness of teaching in various classroom settings. Although hand-held clicker response systems have been the subject of multiple prior studies, few studies have focused on the use of cell phone-based personal response system (CPPRS) specifically. This study…

Although a number of studies suggest that interteaching is an effective alternative to traditional teaching methods, no studies have systematically examined whether interteaching improves long-term memory. In this study, we assigned students to different teaching conditions--interteaching, lecture, or control--and then gave them a multiple-choice…

Part of the educator's mission is to develop new methodologies that promote active learning. This study examines the use of dramatization of the cardiac cycle in medical school. Two groups (n = 42, 21 each) of first-year medical students participated. Group A was initially taught through dramatization alone, while Group B was taught through…

This author discovered that his most powerful tool in the classroom was not to lecture, but to stop speaking at all. The effect of the resulting silence was even more positive than he could have imagined.

Students' learning experiences in an introductory statistics course for non-math majors are compared between two different instructional approaches under controlled conditions. Two sections of the course (n = 52) are taught using a flipped classroom approach and one section (n = 30) is taught using a traditional lecture approach. All sections are…

The inverted classroom allows more in-class time for inquiry-based learning and for working through more advanced problem-solving activities than does the traditional lecture class. The skills acquired in this learning environment offer benefits far beyond the statistics classroom. This paper discusses four ways that can make the inverted…

Using a quasi-experimental design, the authors examined student performance (i.e., exam scores) in a traditional, lecture-based course (n = 43) and a team-based learning (TBL) course (n = 47). Students from James Madison University, USA--who were unaware that the two sections of the course were taught using different methods--self-selected into…

Postsecondary remedial mathematics courses often have relatively low pass rates compared to other courses (Bahr, 2008; Virginia College Community System, 2011) and have contributed to the view that mathematics is a gatekeeper for college success (Epper & Baker, 2009). This study addressed this situation by exploring recommendations made by…

No matter the college, a class in the principles of microeconomics is likely to cover the discipline's greatest hits. Opportunity cost? Check. Supply and demand? Ditto. The same goes for such topics as comparative advantage, elasticity, and market structures. But these touchstones of the curriculum may only modestly influence what a student…

A growing number of studies have shown that interteaching produces better student-learning outcomes than more traditional teaching methods such as lecture. But to date, no studies have directly examined whether interteaching is differentially effective for students who typically earn either good or bad grades in their courses. In this study, we…

Several studies suggest that interteaching improves student learning more than traditional lectures, but few have examined which components of interteaching contribute to its efficacy. We examined whether the lecture component of interteaching affected students' exam grades and cumulative point totals in a research methods course. Although…

A successful lecture that includes meaningful class discussions requires students to be familiar with the topics covered in the assigned reading. However, because college students frequently do not complete such reading prior to class, instructors are faced with the challenge of finding methods that would encourage students to do so. The purpose…

In this article, the author discusses the issues surrounding the production of lecture videos by professors and administrators which are free to the world. Professors across the country are now wrestling with this issue. More and more colleges have installed microphones or cameras in lecture halls and bought easy-to-use software to get lecture…