Advances in technology and cultural shifts towards a more open sharing of information afford college instructors additional methods to establish a powerful teacher-student connection. By creating and curating Open Educational Resources (OER) for students, instructors customize the learning experience for their students and show them that they care…

The paper presents a system of emotions and attention analysis during e-learning multimedia contents consumption. The paper wants to explore the possible connections between facial expressions and user engagement while consuming multimedia e-learning courses such as tutorials, on-line quizzes and learning games. If a relevant connection emerges we…

Nowell Academy in Providence, Rhode Island primarily serves pregnant and parenting, overaged, and undercredited high school students, 96% of whom have had past difficulties with consistent attendance. Nowell provides incentives for students to come to school by offering daycare services, learning experiences that connect curriculum to the real…

Self-determination can support student mental health, particularly related to internalizing behaviors, because self-determined actions enable self-motivating consequences (i.e., self-efficacy). Self-regulation--a subset of self-determination--is often utilized by interventionists to improve self-determination and student behavior. Self-regulation…

Diary methods have long been used as pedagogic tools in learning, and as part of reflective practice in teacher education, but less often as data collection instruments in educational research. This is in part due to implementation challenges emerging from the time and literacy demands they place on participants. To illustrate the use of diary…

Classroom management systems (CMS) are class-wide strategies that teachers use to keep students on task, attentive, and academically engaged. This review provides teachers an overview of eight effective and socially valid CMSs that are aligned with school-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS). The goal is to provide teachers…

In this article, the authors explain how they leveraged the popularity of the "Star Wars" franchise to introduce a task steeped in popular culture as a fun way to engage their students in investigating complex mathematics that have real-life connections to careers in toy design and engineering design in general. The authors share various…

Family engagement and family literacy are two of the most important or components for building a strong foundation for children's academic success. Family engagement is about spending quality time with children every day by talking, playing, and asking questions, which builds bonds and promotes language development. Family literacy supports…

A problem-based learning activity focusing on the human impact on the environment and the importance of sustainable development is presented. The activity revolves around a mysterious island where the civilization is on the blink of extinction, prompting students to investigate how human behavior, ecosystems, resources, and natural balance…

This article describes a 'research project' at a girls school where teachers wanted to improve their students' engagement and interest in mathematics. Conversations with the students indicated they thought mathematics was difficult but also repetitive and boring, with lessons that had little variety of tasks. While some students like to learn…

The role of peer teaching has long been established in academia as a means to foster student engagement in the classroom, increase student learning, and as a way to reduce faculty workload. This chapter highlights the direct and powerful positive impacts of engaging students as teachers upon the student providing the instruction, those receiving…

We describe the design, creation, and preliminary evaluation of a hands-on interactive game, "Giant Genes," which was developed to explain the concept of genetics and the central dogma of gene expression to audiences at Cardiff University's Brain Games. The Giant Genes game is a modified version of the traditional game "Jenga."…

The author, an instructor of lower division general education (G.E.) geography courses, describes how to incorporate high-impact practices into courses that allow for experiential and project-based learning. Often, these experiences can be framed through a service learning component, which provides students an opportunity to partner with the local…

This chapter presents research-based practices to improve student learning in online environments through intentional interactions between instructors, content, and students.

In creating crossword puzzles themselves, students gain an understanding of a concept in order to create the clue for it. The instructor can make this activity either chapter- or domain-specific, for instance, to encourage reading the textbook and researching concepts. In this unique application of the self-generated crossword, students use free…