Undergraduate science degrees in South Africa seldom offer explicit courses focussing on improving the disciplinary writing skills required for effectively communicating scientific research. Similarly, most students entering the 'Honours' degree in Molecular Medicine at a South African university have not commonly been afforded opportunities to…

In this essay we discuss an iterative, reflective writing assignment (the "learning charter") as a way to understand how high-achieving students experienced an ungrading learning environment. Working with evidence from student written reflection and in-class conversations, we chronicle how students articulated their perspectives on this…

This paper presents a case study in student led syllabus design, geared to support diverse learning styles and to enhance student engagement. In this case, students in an Honors American Government Course participated in designing their own syllabus for the semester. This was done through a written survey in which students were able to select…

This paper analyses the determinants or factors that best explain student research skills and success in the honours research report module during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. The study reported in this paper employed the mixed methods approach comprising a quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative and econometric analysis of the…

Assessment and evaluation practices within honors programs have attracted considerable attention within the honors academic community, e.g., the spring/summer 2006 volume of the "Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council." Calls for carefully created and constructed assessment activities within honors programs have met with mixed…

This article details the aim, development, and implementation of the Chemistry-Genetics Course Collaborative (CGCC), a cotaught offering of a human genetics course with an honors introductory chemistry course. The CGCC was formed to fully integrate the two courses, along with the associated chemistry lab, to create an interdisciplinary scientific…

This study contributes to the on-going discourse on calibration among University students. The study examines the understanding of student self-reflectivity in relation to class written tests and assignments, and of the fact that students' expected results rarely match the actual results. A quantitative research approach was adopted to collect…

Learning to write well is a significant outcome of higher education, as confirmed and illustrated in the Written Communication VALUE Rubric of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Scholars agree that writing and thinking are linked. Thinking about this relationship between writing and thinking in the context of…

The author describes the principal findings of a survey study looking at student perceptions of a new form-based approach to reflective journaling. A form-based journal assignment was developed for use in introductory lecture courses and tested over a two-year period in an Honors General Chemistry course for engineers with a total of 157…

In Larry Clark's monograph chapter on the education of academically talented college students, he challenged honors educators to consider their role in helping students find their path, particularly through the addition of self-reflection and exploratory projects in honors courses. In an honors first-year experience (FYE) course for science,…

This study investigated the combined predictive validity of intelligence and personality factors on multiple measures of academic achievement. Students in a college of higher education in the Netherlands (N = 137) completed a survey that measured intelligence, the Big Five personality traits, motivation, and four specific personality traits.…

The purpose of this study was to investigate what happened when grade 11 high school honors students blogged about their summer reading under the monitoring of a teacher during vacation. I proposed that an educational blog might serve as an effective tool during summer vacation to help students retain skills or learning while at a physical…