Critical thinking skills are sought after in the workforce and are often included in course, departmental, and programmatic learning objectives. However, in the curriculum of many courses we tend to focus on content rather than on fostering the growth of the cognitive skills needed to improve critical thinking ability. Further, skills are…

We designed, implemented, and evaluated a game-based learning approach to increase student motivation and achievement for an undergraduate physical chemistry course. By focusing only on the most important game aspects, the implementation was realized with a production ratio of 1:8 (study load in hours divided by production effort in hours).…

Classroom questions represent a potentially powerful tool for interacting with students and stimulating critical thinking. However, the efficacy of the question-and-answer approach to teaching is influenced by many factors, such as the type and cognitive level of questions asked as well as students' response time. To examine these factors and…

Introductory biology courses form a cornerstone of undergraduate instruction. However, the predominantly used lecture approach fails to produce higher-order biology learning. Research shows that active learning strategies can increase student learning, yet few biology instructors use all identified active learning strategies. In this paper, we…

National stakeholders are becoming increasingly concerned about the inability of college graduates to think critically. Research shows that, while both faculty and students deem critical thinking essential, only a small fraction of graduates can demonstrate the thinking skills necessary for academic and professional success. Many faculty are…

Presented is a study in which students' intellectual reasoning development was evaluated following instruction that emphasized formal operations in a traditional lecture format. Results indicated that formal-operational students had significantly more success in the three reasoning areas than transitional students and transitional students had…

An experimental study was designed to study the effectiveness of Problem Based Learning (PBL) in the context of higher education in an urban-city university in Lima, Peru. In the fall semester of 2004, eleven sections of Chemistry 1 were offered to first year students in the College of Science at this University. In six of these eleven sections…