Critical thinking is a common and important learning outcome in college curricula. Case-based and problem-based learning can be used to assess and foster critical thinking skills. HNF 250--Contemporary Issues in Human Nutrition is a critical thinking course developed during the redesign of a nutritional sciences major program. Course assignments…

Undergraduate writing fellows play an important role in administering writing assignments in writing-intensive courses. At the University of Michigan, the MWrite program was designed to support the implementation of writing-to-learn (WTL) assignments in STEM courses. Within MWrite, writing fellows are a primary instructional resource for students…

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been proposed as a mechanism to democratize access to the benefits of apprentice-style scientific research to a broader diversity of students, promoting inclusivity and increasing student success and retention. As we evaluate CUREs, it is essential to explore their effectiveness within…

An interdisciplinary Pop-Up Learning Community (PLC) allowed students from various disciplines with different levels of content knowledge to discuss their perspectives on and beliefs about climate change. The impact of this event on students' climate change beliefs was gauged by a survey from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. This…

Recent efforts in organic chemistry education research focus on investigating activities and strategies designed to elicit students' mechanistic reasoning. This study investigates how a scaffolded case comparison activity implemented in an introductory organic chemistry course elicits and supports students' mechanistic reasoning in an authentic…

Due to current and upcoming needs in the discipline and accreditation, the Nutritional Sciences faculty at a major university reformed their curriculum using backward design. As part of this process, they developed new learning outcomes that aligned to the institutional learning outcomes and mapped these new outcomes across the major's required…

In an era in which public postsecondary institutions increasingly face budget constraints, the state residency of students has become an important factor in complex decisions on tuition-setting policies and enrollment management. This report examines the current trends and impact of out-of-state tuition premiums -- defined as the additional amount…

The fundamental structure of a typical mainstream two-semester organic chemistry course, populated mostly by life science majors and taught at universities throughout the United States, has changed little since the 1970s. However, much of the research on learning in organic chemistry has been devoted to characterizing student difficulties of…

The purpose of this study was to determine if implementing student response technology (SRT) and case studies into a largely populated university undergraduate course would influence student engagement. When student engagement is influenced the potential for positive learning outcomes occurs leading to a higher likelihood of student success (Swap…

Software Verification and Validation (SV&V) is proven to be an effective approach to ensure software quality. Yet it is not commonly deployed in industry practices. We started a project intent on building a sustainable community skilled in SV&V. The fundamental objective is the transformation of undergraduate education in software…

University of Michigan--Dearborn offers a one semester, two credit, stand-alone Organic Chemistry Laboratory course aimed at students with an interest in health-related careers. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a campus closure and a subsequent transition to a partially remote laboratory curriculum developed on-the-fly for the Winter 2020 semester…

Preparing to become a music teacher educator is a complex process and one component of this process should be learning to model, demonstrate, and teach assessment practices to preservice music educators. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to discover how, and to what extent, music teacher educators (MTEs) are educated about…

Using a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) model of education, an English composition instructor designed an honors section of first-year composition to evaluate current best practices in the field of teaching writing to STEM undergraduates. The students, all first-year engineering majors, conducted guided research on best…

What works to improve the success of Latino college students? Examples of "Excelencia" is the only national effort to identify and promote evidence-based programs accelerating Latino student success in higher education. Since 2005, "Excelencia" in Education has recognized over 350 programs making a positive difference in the…

Soft-skill competencies are essential for successful careers. Yet, research shows that graduates often lack soft skill competencies. Reasons may be there is no set list of soft skills, soft skills are subjective, and they are challenging to teach and assess. Historically, there has been inconsistent funding for soft skill training in the U.S. for…