Students' sense of belonging is known to be strongly associated with academic achievement and a successful life at university. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of belonging, this study collected data via the 10 Words Question. Responses from 426 participants were analysed using a sequence of analytic methods including In Vivo coding,…

This report summarizes the practices and findings of the pilot year of Student-Centered Assessment Network (SCAN), which used real-time testing to determine effective and engaging classroom assessment practices for students. Data gathered through quality assessment can be used by teachers to support their students' needs, as well as by students…

Making students become intrinsically motivated to participate in daily class activities is an open challenge that has been addressed in different ways. In this article, we evaluate the impact of an educational innovation project, named TrivialCV, in terms of student motivation, engagement, and learning outcomes. We analyze the impact of two types…

Lightboard technology has only been around since 2013, but has already shown up on numerous campuses worldwide. There is a dearth of research related to lightboard videos, so there is a need to systematically explore its potential and best practices. This paper explores the pedagogical potential of lightboards for higher education through…

Having the opportunity to teach is a valuable experience to those starting out in the world of academia. In this article, the authors cast a reflective lens on their experiences of teaching and their participation in a structured programme York Learning and Teaching Award (YLTA), designed for new and aspiring academics and working towards becoming…

Engaging students as partners in the scholarship of learning and teaching (SoTL) is a principle guiding good practice. Enthusiasm for student-faculty partnerships in learning and teaching continues to grow. In this essay, I want to invite readers to reflect with me about concerns of resistance to partnership practices. I interweave stories from my…

Finding materials that engage adult learners in meaningful ways is an irksome task, especially when the academic needs of a beginning literacy classroom are incredibly diverse. Off-the-shelf curriculum often fails to meet instructional needs as the materials are either too simple or too disconnected from targeted learning goals. As a result,…

I advance theoretically and empirically grounded arguments for broadening how we frame and understand situational interests. A situational interest refers to the short-term spike in a person's attention and participation in an activity and it is triggered in the interactions between the person and environment features (e.g., novelty and surprise).…

Hands-on experiences are excellent tools for increasing retention of first year engineering students. They also encourage interdisciplinary collaboration, a critical skill for modern engineers. In this paper, we describe and evaluate a joint Chemical and Materials Engineering hands-on lab that explores cross-linking and glass transition in…

Undergraduate research is recognized as a high-impact educational practice (Kuh & O'Donnell, 2013), and increasingly it occurs world-wide in higher education, in particular in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. In each of these countries, undergraduate research is delivered through a variety of pedagogical approaches that…

In schools, band is often seen as a class where students and teachers can be creative. But is this true? Many schools use a traditional band model, which may not allow space for creative activities. This article, inspired by the "Music Educators Journal" March 2017 special focus on teaching for musical creativity, examines and critiques…

Educators have long been rightly concerned about the risk that schools themselves can produce profoundly unsettling and potentially 'unproductive' emotional and physical states among children and youth. This chapter examines two moments in the attentive regimes and engagement paradigms that have been manifest in the material design of schools and…

Collaborative worldbuilding is an ideal digital writing project for promoting critical thinking about contemporary issues, developing and applying disciplinary expertise writing transfer, and building digital literacies. In the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic where the student experience was characterised by isolation, collaborative…

This article looks past the gifted classics of children's literature to explore the incredible opportunity that is missed all too often: an opportunity to intentionally choose books in which diversity is not the point but showcase much-needed representation. Drawing on the concepts of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors this article explores…

The South African Higher Education Institution (HEI) sector had to move to 'emergency' online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they embraced a humanistic approach underpinned by the need to complete the academic year in 2020 and support all students. Because this emergency online learning accelerated the digital shift, evidence of…