Educating new generations of physicists is often seen as a matter of attracting good students, teaching them physics and making sure that they stay at the university. Sometimes, questions are also raised about what could be done to increase diversity in recruitment. Using a discursive perspective, in this study of three introductory quantum…

Critics of higher education in Nepal, even the concerned agencies, are much worried about the decreased quality resulting in low employability of higher education. The most common adjectives used by them to describe this state are 'theoretical' and/or 'impractical'. The present case study was instigated when two college students of third year…

Australian universities have moved towards greater reliance on technology as a learning tool. The use of podcasts or recorded lectures (sometimes called ilectures) is now common practice in both on-campus and online modes. Using a qualitative approach to data collection which included recorded interviews, an online survey of open-ended questions…

Science and engineering educators and employers agree that students should graduate from college with expertise in their major subject area as well as the skills and competencies necessary for productive participation in diverse work environments. These competencies include problem-solving, communication, leadership, and collaboration, among…

Studies on the use of digital voting systems in large group teaching situations have often focused on the "non-anonymity" and control and testing functions that the technology provides. There has also been some interest in how students might use their votes tactically to gain "credits". By focusing on an empirical study of…

In the 2013-2014 school year, we implemented the "flipped classroom" as part of an initiative to drive active learning, student engagement and enhanced learning in our school. The flipped courses consisted of freshman through senior engineering classes in introductory programming, statics/mechanics, mechanical design, bio-thermodynamics,…

Teaching practices can create a range of autonomy-supportive or controlling learning environments. Research shows that autonomy-supportive techniques are more conducive to positive learning outcomes than controlling techniques. This study focused on simple verbal and behavioral cues that any teacher could use to create a positive learning…

Following collaboration between two chemistry lecturers and an academic developer an attempt was made to enhance the learning of students within a chemistry module through the adaptation of the delivery of content material. This paper reports a piece of practitioner led research which considered how effective the approach developed was upon the…

Seventeen social educator students were taught to analyze their work activity by means of a Vygotsky-inspired method, drawing on Engeström's notion of an activity system. The method aimed at increasing the consciousness of the students of the structure of work activity system. The participants wrote two accounts of their field-work practice…

This article reports on an action-research project designed to investigate the effect of a technological intervention on the complex interactions between student engagement, participation, attendance and preparation in a large lecture delivered as part of a compulsory first-year law course, a discipline which has not been the focus of any previous…

This study was aimed at mapping features of constructivist activities in higher education settings, constructing and validating a new scale for measuring their presence in lecture face-to-face based environments (LBE), seminars (SM), and distance learning environments (DLE). A mix-method approach was implemented in three phases. The first phase…

Many Australian state primary schools have a policy to use generalist teachers to teach music as well as many other subjects, however research indicates that primary generalist teachers lack confidence and competence to teach music in their classrooms. Added to this, preservice teachers enter their initial teacher education course with little or…

There has been an increased emphasis for college instruction to incorporate more active and collaborative involvement of students in the learning process. These views have been asserted by The Association of American Colleges (AAC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and The National Research Counsel (NRC), which are advocating for the…

This qualitative case study examines the initial implementation of a problem-based version of an undergraduate course in materials science for the purpose of identifying areas of improvement to the curriculum prior to a planned second implementation. The course was designed around problems that students work in small teams to solve under the…

This study documents students' views about the nature of mathematics, the mathematics learning process and factors within the classroom that are perceived to impact upon the learning of mathematics. The participants were senior secondary school students. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to understand the students' views about their…