Over the last few years, Texas, Connecticut, and California have led the way in approving courses in ethnic studies to provide high school students with engaging, culturally relevant instruction. Texas blazed the trail in 2018 when its state board of education approved an elective course in Mexican American studies. Then in April 2020, the board…

The COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary for instructors to innovate, and some of the innovations will persist and be refined post-pandemic. An economics elective at Claremont McKenna College provides examples. Innovations likely to persist include replacing in-class exams with context-rich assignments and conducting a set of student presentations…

In this article we present and discuss the importance and relevance of the inclusion of spatial data analysis as part of the undergraduate statistics curriculum. Given its usefulness and applicability across a range of disciplines, spatial data are a topic that should receive more emphasis within undergraduate statistics curricula. There exist…

Perusall, a collaborative reading tool, was introduced in an advanced reading and writing skills course in Hong Kong to increase engagement with texts and encourage critical discussion during the COVID-19 face-to-face class suspension. Students were asked to use the Perusall platform to complete pre-class readings, highlight and annotate text and…

The Graduate Certificate in Data Science for the Chemical Industries was designed to provide skills to working professionals, via a fully online and asynchronous format. The certificate may also be earned by undergraduate and graduate students at Georgia Tech. The certificate consists of four courses. The two core courses are Data Analytics for…

Approaching elective courses and courses on special topics in Chemistry can seem daunting at times, given the varied backgrounds of the students, together with the broad nature of topics. Often, institutions may give incentives for creating sustainability related course offerings, but knowing where to start and how to organize the information…

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted music education worldwide with a particular impact on choral music. The purpose of this research-to-resource article is to provide music educators with research-based strategies for recruitment and persistence in choral music during the pandemic recovery. Using the theoretical frameworks of self-determination…

The history and philosophy of science (HPS) plays a special role in education. An elective HPS course on the philosophy of scientific experimentation for young scientists and graduate students of natural science is presented. The course bears a pragmatic character, and its main aims include the development of critical thinking (CT),…

Mathematics education faculty working in mathematics departments are commonly involved in teaching undergraduate mathematics courses, teaching and supervising postgraduate students of mathematics education, and developing mathematics teachers (pre-service and/or in-service). This paper proposes a new elective course that can be taken by either…

This article describes a novel approach to teaching Artificial intelligence (AI) using artistic themes with a cohort of 20 high school students, ranging in age from 13 to 16 at the Beijing Academy, in Chaoyang District, Beijing, China. The elective class was conducted online by U.S.-based teachers as part of an ongoing partnership to provide…

Classroom space limitations and increasing student enrollments push universities to the development of alternative course delivery models. The authors describe how a high-enrollment, general elective course was converted into a HyFlex model. A HyFlex course provides flexible participation, allowing students the choice of attending face-to-face…

The authors describe an undergraduate economics elective focused on the Great Recession and the recession resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. They have taught the course with great success at both liberal arts colleges and research universities and at all levels of the curriculum ranging from a first-year seminar to an upper-level elective. They…

Critical thinking skills are widely considered to be important transferable skills gained from taking college-level economics courses that are also highly valued by employers. Yet, the literature on intentionally teaching critical thinking skills in undergraduate economics classes is still relatively sparse. The author of this article outlines an…

Employing a modified version of an exhibit template for course integration (Beckman 2012), Sylvia López designed museum projects for an elective Spanish course on health that is open to students at the high-intermediate level and above. The course's aims are manifold: to build students' vocabulary, to discuss cultural aspects affecting health, and…

A chemistry course designed as an elective for chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and pharmaceutical science majors is described. The course is designed for second- through fourth-year undergraduate students. The prerequisite is first-semester, second-year undergraduate organic chemistry with the second semester of the organic sequence as a…