In this paper I try to 'rethink' consistency as an educational quality for the 3rd millennium, following Italo Calvino's choice to take it up in his lecture series Memos for the Next Millennium, and despite the fact that the (final) lecture devoted to this quality remained unwritten. After reflecting on how consistency already plays a certain role…

Background: Attentiveness during class is critical for learning. Teachers have strategies to promote active engagement and active learning, yet little control over students' baseline level of alertness and focus upon arriving to class. Objective: To evaluate the effect of pre-lecture cognitive exercise on attention and learning in lectures.…

Daniel J. Boorstin was a distinguished historian at the University of Chicago from 1944 to 1969; later he served as librarian of Congress. A prolific author throughout his 89 years, Boorstin saved several unpublished manuscripts. His cogent observations on college lectures are resurrected here. For Boorstin, the widespread definition of great…

Under the appropriate conditions, oscillatory chemical reactions have the capacity to generate chemical waves and spatial patterns. Among these structures, Turing patterns are a distinct class that, to date, has not been commonly demonstrated in a classroom environment. We present here a novel, practical procedure for the demonstration of Turing…

This chapter describes a literature review evaluating five innovative health professions education approaches to large group teaching and presents student perspectives regarding their implementation.

Video lectures in massive open online courses (MOOCs) provide an opportunity to not only deliver instructional content but also engage learners. While there are many different styles of video lectures, it is not clear how video styles affect learner engagement. This study analysed and critiqued different typologies of video styles and classified…

Instructional videos have been increasingly critical to afford effective learning experiences in online courses, but most videos follow a lecturing monolog delivery format. This format tends to lead students to observe the videos passively. Previous laboratory studies have indicated that observing dialog videos of an instructor tutoring a tutee…

Background: Practice tests have been shown to be an effective means to foster long-term retention in higher education, at least compared to restudying (i.e., the testing effect). Objective: The present study replicated and extended prior research by examining whether and to what extent the positive effects of testing on long-term retention in a…

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, students have more choice of how to attend courses than ever before; for a large number of courses at a technical university, they are still able to watch the lectures live online or in recorded format later. We found that interactivity may bring back students into the classroom almost as effectively as…

While previous studies have shown that L2 listeners tend to focus more on videos with additional information, like presentation slides, the amount of eye gaze did not necessarily translate to higher listening test scores . Unlike previous research focusing on the benefits of additional visual cues, this study explores how emotions impact L2…

Background: Leaderboards are a highly popular gamification component used in student learning to enhance motivation, attentional engagement, and learning performance. However, few studies have examined the effects of individual leaderboard elements on English vocabulary learning through video lectures. Objectives: The present study aimed to…

Video lectures are considered as one of the primary media to cater good-quality educational content to the learners. The video lectures illustrate the course-relevant concepts with necessary details. However, they sometimes fail to offer a basic understanding of off-topic concepts. Such off-topic concepts may spawn cognitive overload among the…

This paper is a discussion of the concept 'student active forms of learning'. It aims not at conclusions, but at a perspicuous representation--a map for future navigation and understanding of the concept. From the perspective of philosophy of education, I characterize and discuss issues relating to student active learning in the paper. The context…

A previous meta-analysis found that active learning has a positive impact on learning achievements for college students in STEM fields of study. However, no similar meta-analyses have been conducted in the humanities and social sciences. Because major dissimilarities may exist between different fields or domain of knowledge, there can be issues…

COVID-19 greatly increased the online delivery of higher education. But one limitation of online learning is that students often struggle to stay engaged while watching online lectures. We examined whether including an instructor's face in lecture videos (instructor visibility) enhances student engagement or learning. In two preregistered…