This teaching note presents an assignment in which students write an op-ed on a course-related issue and submit it to a newspaper. I argue that an op-ed assignment dovetails with pedagogical goals around democratic citizenship and public sociology. I explain the project's objectives, instructions, and timeline. I present evidence from three…

Over the past decade, the preparation of student affairs professionals has evolved. Historically, curricular professional preparation existed solely at the graduate level. Today, there is a growing trend around designing and offering undergraduate student affairs coursework (UGSAC) packaged as stand-alone electives, minors, certificates, or…

Team-based learning (TBL) is an evidence-based collaborative pedagogical strategy that engages student knowledge through group collaboration. Using TBL, a course is designed around units of instruction, referred to as modules. TBL has been found to motivate students by holding them accountable to themselves and their peers, while also introducing…

Social media is becoming more popular, and its resourcefulness has given students new opportunities to learn as well as broaden their academic horizons in various ways assumed if social media is handled appropriately. The main purpose of this study was positioned to estimate the predictive mediating effects of social media on the relationship…

We have recently developed an automated approach to reduce students' rationalization of programming plagiarism and collusion by informing them about the matter and reporting uncommon similarities to them for each of their submissions. Although the approach has benefits, it does not greatly engage students, which might limit those benefits. To…

A public service announcement is a form of public, free-space messaging in which an individual proposes an idea with the aim to influence the public's attitude toward an exciting potential (Slater 2006). In this article, the author describes implementing this method across a wide variety of undergraduate content disciplines, including psychology,…

Systemic challenges for feedback practice are widely discussed in the research literature. The expanding mass higher education systems, for instance, seem to inhibit regular and sustained teacher-student interactions. The concept of "feedback literacy," representing students' and teachers' capacities to optimize the benefits of feedback…

This study examines how student engagement and social relationships between teachers and students may enhance the learning experiences of students in a South African university. Two separate sets of semi-structured interviews were held with 27 university teachers and 51 students respectively. The findings revealed that that the relationships…

This exploratory sequential study of the sense of community and support experienced by women in the Organizational Leadership Doctor of Education (OLDE) online program at Home University, drew upon Kahu's (2013) holistic conceptual model of student engagement which emphasized a need for research that focuses on the student experience at individual…

Social media as a medium to facilitate and foster learning and engagement in education has received increased attention in recent years. Researchers have highlighted the affordances and drawbacks of social media use in educational contexts. There is a gap in the relevant literature on the social media learning and engagement experiences of…

High school science fairs provide an exceptional opportunity for students to gain experience with scientific research, and participation has positive outcomes with respect to chosen careers in the sciences. However, it can be challenging to engage high school students in university-level research outside of formal internship programs. Here, we…

The Big Bend region of Trans-Pecos Texas preserves a rich record of Rio Grande rifting and Laramide-age contraction that provide intrigue to national and state park visitors and field trips for undergraduate geology students. Despite its well-exposed geologic record, the Big Bend region remains an underutilized natural laboratory for studying…

This design research study describes how one mentor teacher-teacher candidate dyad co-learned to promote student engagement and participation through using a "Collaborative Learning Structure" (CLS) tool that we are developing. We share how the dyad used the CLS, with support from a professional development facilitator and fellow…

Researches conducted on narrative as it relates to learning overwhelmingly agree on its benefit for learners. Benefits include better comprehension, retention, persuasion, meaning-making, and wisdom for navigating the world. Themes in the literature relating to narrative and epistemology include narrative theory, narrative identity, narrative…

This article examines how doctoral candidates characterize factors that influence constructive engagement in their respective program experiences and how these have served as primary catalysts for learning along their doctoral journeys.