In this teaching tip, we--a literacy professor and two K-12 teachers--encourage a rethinking of the baseline writing assessment by sharing our experiences with "The Paper Selfie," an activity that juxtaposes the arts and young people's personal writing. By centering students' identities, their hopes, beliefs, dreams, and realities,…

We are living through a very difficult moment in human history where we are having to make almost daily decisions about our health, occupations, environment, economics, and democracy, while being bombarded with disinformation, misinformation, and "alternative facts" relative to those decisions. A highly developed information literacy…

By incorporating visual mapping into students' thinking and writing processes, a narrative assignment in geo-literacy creates a reflective and agency-based learning experience for student writers in a first-year honors seminar.

The purpose of this research study was to investigate pedagogical approaches for improving reading compliance and critical, insightful discussion in the higher education classroom. Research on reading compliance in higher education reveals that students are often not reading their assigned texts. This problem compounds when instructors attempt to…

Students possess informal, intuitive ways of reasoning about the world, including biological phenomena. Although useful in some cases, intuitive reasoning can also lead to the development of scientifically inaccurate ideas that conflict with central concepts taught in formal biology education settings, including evolution. Using antibiotic…

How do some high schools produce graduates that consistently achieve at high levels? Would you believe there's a set of proven strategies that could help you deliver similar impressive results and better prepare students for the world after high school? High schools in the United States face a startling reality: many graduates are unprepared for…

Assessments are the fundamental media between students and educators. This paper aims to evaluate how to create assessments, how students learn from them, and how to link them to the industry and entrepreneurism. The implementation plan postulates how students can generate income from income-generation assessments or business innovation…

With the highly interdisciplinary nature of biochemistry, and the diverse range of students taking introductory biochemistry courses, it can be difficult to incorporate authentic applications of course content that appeal broadly to students. However, it is important to engage students' learning at the affective level. One mode to achieve this…

Contract cheating -- outsourcing student assignments for a fee -- presents a growing threat to the integrity of higher education. As contract cheating is based on students purchasing assignments that are original (albeit not created by the student), traditional plagiarism detection tools remain insufficient to detect contract cheating. Part of the…

Creative thinking is an important learning outcome for students because it can help students learn course concepts and help prepare students for the workforce. This article explains an assignment where students cultivate creative thinking on course concepts. Students are tasked with developing an original creative project, such as a poem, drawing,…

This chapter addresses how sustainability can be incorporated within the Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics curriculum. Examples of assignments along with case study assessments of the impact of the assignments as they relate to understanding and fostering sustainability in the student are provided.

Despite the popularity of automated writing evaluation (AWE) that has provoked an increased scholarly interest, synthesized research to comprehensively understand its pedagogical effects is still in paucity. To fill the gap, this study aims to meta-analyse the overall effect of AWE on learners' writing skill development and whether the effect…

Introduction: We propose a visionary working model to normalize the pursuit of social justice praxis in educational psychology courses. Using our undergraduate course as an example, we discuss our roles as instructors, curriculum, and pedagogical strategies for forward progress. Statement of the Problem: Despite stated commitments to diversity,…

Performing complex tasks such as writing an argumentative essay and providing high-quality argumentative peer feedback are challenging for higher education students. This study aims to explore whether and how students' argumentation performance during peer feedback activities and essay writing is related to their culture and gender. In this…

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…