Student-centered education is in the air. It is present in many reform agendas for higher education across every discipline and is shortlisted as an important goal for teaching and learning in many reports and recommendations of professional agencies and scientific societies. There is wide consensus that moving from teacher-centered to…

The relation between lecture attendance and learning is surprisingly weak, and the role of learning styles in this is poorly understood. We hypothesized that 1) academic performance is related to lecture attendance and 2) learning style influences lecture attendance and, consequently, affects performance. We also speculated that the availability…

An online, lecture/laboratory course in Human Physiology was run in two sections in five consecutive summers. In each year, the two sections were identical in content, assignments, and assessments but were different in duration; the shorter section was 1 mo and the longer section lasted 2 mo. The shorter section had a higher enrollment and a…

Most timeline analogies of geologic and evolutionary time are fundamentally flawed. They trade off the problem of grasping very long times for the problem of grasping very short distances. The result is an understanding of relative time with little comprehension of absolute time. Earlier work has shown that the distances most easily understood by…

The paper presents the results of research on the relationship between self-assessed comprehension of physics lectures and final grades of junior high school students (aged 13-15), high school students (aged 16-18) and physics students at the Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland (aged 21). Students' declared level of comprehension was measured…

Today's undergraduates are highly engaged in a variety of social media outlets. Given their comfort with technology, we wondered if we could use this phenomenon to teach science-related material. We asked students to use freeware to make a short video with text, images, and music as a way to explain scientific concepts that are traditionally…

An artificial, and generally unhelpful, divide between lecturers and students frequently occurs in higher education, especially among recent school-leavers. Bridging that divide allows lecturers and students to develop collaboratively to the benefit of both parties. Residential field courses provide an important forum to develop more mature…

We studied student seating habits in both a traditional lecture hall with the instructor in the front and in a SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Activities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs) studio-style classroom with the instructor in the middle. Like several previous authors, we find that students with higher course grades tend to sit in the…

Many college science educators have moved away from the traditional lecture format and toward learner-centered classroom environments. Yet many of us struggle to cover large content loads, reverting at times to rote memorization. This paper suggests rote memorization simply does not work and students must be actively engaged to learn. (Contains 1…

This dissertation describes the teaching methods and educational philosophies of natural philosophy instructors at several of the colleges in colonial and early national North America. It finds two distinct approaches: the demonstrative, in which the instructor centers the course on visually engaging lecture-demonstrations, and the catechetical,…

Tips on lesson planning for college teachers are offered. A sample lesson plan cover sheet and sample lesson plan are included. (JN)

Describes a strategy designed to alleviate two major problems of the lecture system in chemistry. The strategy involves presenting "station breaks" of historical and practical information during lectures to reduce boredom and the ignorance of the history and commercial importance of chemistry. (JN)

Physics students were exposed to one of three lecture styles: blackboard, overhead projector, or two channel slide presentation. The latter method utilizes two slide projectors; after a slide has been discussed it is transferred to the second projector where it is displayed until the slide changes again. Student questionnaires revealed a…

Describes research into student attention patterns during lectures that suggests that student attention declines steadily during a lecture, and that the rate of decrease is dependent upon several variables including subject difficulty. (MLH)

Described are five techniques to improve student learning during lectures: (1) separating listening from recording and requiring note-taking to be undertaken from memory; (2) using active review during the lecture; (3) using structured discussion; (4) using instant questionnaires; and (5) having students summarize important things from the…