Professors often give members of a group project the same grade or they use peer evaluations to provide individualized grades. Unfortunately, both these methods have shortcomings. This article describes the segment manager method (SMM), a method for assigning individualized grades on the group project that does not rely on peer evaluations. A…

The main objective of this article is to present and describe two multimedia experiences carried out during two practice groups in the Journalism and Audiovisual Communications program. Thirty students participated in Experience A during 14 teaching sessions, and the experience required each student to record a 3-minute interview of someone…

Background: This paper presents a case study from a physics course at a Norwegian university college, investigating key aspects of a group-work project, so-called learning labs, from the participating students' perspective. Purpose: In order to develop these learning labs further, the students' perspective is important. Which aspects are essential…

The author explores concrete ways to help students learn more and have fun doing it while they support each other's learning. The article specifically shows the relationships between cooperative learning and deep learning. Readers will become familiar with the tenets of cooperative learning and its power to enhance learning--even more so when…

Ostracism--being ignored and excluded--is a painful event that threatens fundamental needs. Ostracized individuals' reflective responses focus on cognitive appraisal and motivated recovery, and previous research suggests these appraisals can help or hinder recovery. Rumination is a negative style of cognitive appraisal that often leads to…

This article reviews a classroom application titled "The Quest for Kudos Challenge," which is a long-term, multitask, large group competition to attain a reward that was designed to adhere to the recommendations for creating a cooperative learning experience while maintaining the elements of a constructive competition. The application…

This article forms part of an exploration into the results of a single-case, embedded study that was conducted to explore how domestic part-time graduate business students in the United States experience group work for summative assessment. Multiple information collection methods were utilised, including open-ended and semi-structured interviews,…

"Capstone" is a metaphor used to describe a final achievement that builds upon previous works and encapsulates them. Capstone projects are included in engineering curricula to integrate multi-disciplinary subjects and teach professional skills that are difficult to impart in a traditional lectured course. Since these projects serve to…

A capstone course is often synthetic, bringing together many components of a student's educational background. For this reason, a project-based course in mathematical modeling makes a great capstone, as modeling problems often require a broad collection of mathematical tools for their solution. The addition of a service-learning component can…

An implicit assumption of many university classes is that students will spend a large amount of time outside the classroom refining their understanding of the material to develop mastery of the concepts. This is especially true in first year mathematics courses at the undergraduate level. However, little is known about what students do to fulfill…

Many instructors have fallen into the syllabus habit of the first day, and students have come to expect nothing more. While reviewing the syllabus is important, it is not all that engaging for either the instructor or the students. In this article, the author establishes the pedagogical importance of the first day of class experience through the…

This study sought to determine if, how, and the extent to which, the implementation of lesson study with preservice teachers facilitates reflection in its participants. The lesson study reports of 20 preservice teachers were analyzed qualitatively along three dimensions to determine what lesson study reports revealed about their reflections. More…

Our mission of capstone computing courses for the past ten years has been to offer students experience with the development of real-world information technology projects. This experience has included both the hard and soft skills required for the work they could expect as industrial practitioners. Hard skills entail extending one's knowledge…

Pedagogical strategies can be thought of as a set of stimuli placed in students' environment to influence their cognition, affect, and behavior. The design of strategies such as group assignments and a comprehensive understanding of their consequences for students should then include an analysis of all three of these elements and the…

Debates have been used to develop critical thinking within teaching environments. Many learning activities are configured as working groups, which use debates to make decisions. Nevertheless, in a classroom debate, only a few students can participate; large work groups are similarly limited. Whilst the use of web tools would appear to offer a…