This article describes a virtual reality (VR) CAVE project designed and created to contextualize the reading of blues poetry within the history and sound of the blues in the United States. The project aimed to provide students with a better understanding of the blues as a musical form so that the nuances of the blues poems of Langston Hughes would be more readily understood, thereby improving comprehension of form and elevating classroom discussion for a humanities seminar. Students navigate the space within a virtual blues joint to access biographical and geographical information about blues musicians and regional sound, as well as to listen to songs and poems and to watch “live” performance. The article includes details of Langston Hughes’ poetic project and the selected poems, the navigable features of the VR project, and student journal responses to the experience, showing the value added to comprehension by accessing the music in a holistic approach.
In this paper, I discuss a fundamental problem for most instructors: how should we weight the different assessments within our course in order to evaluate students effectively? Using a framework which connects curriculum and assessment design, I demonstrate that “fair” evaluation requires a close (and quantitatively measurable) connection between learning outcomes and assessment weighting. I use this framework to provide guidance for optimal assessment design practices, and evaluate a number of commonly-used teaching practices – concluding that many of them pose problems in terms of fairness, when not carefully implemented. I also discuss the implications of alternative grading schemes or other complications for this framework. I finally provide a detailed example of applying these principles to a real-world course, and a toolkit, for use by instructors in evaluating or designing their own courses.
Pathways to support paraprofessionals to become licensed teachers are a particularly relevant avenue to address the current teacher shortage. Starting from the premise that paraprofessionals differ from traditional undergraduate students in significant ways, we embarked on a process of examining how to prepare paraprofessionals in honorable ways. In this reflective essay, we closely examine and reflect upon the learning experiences of paraprofessionals and the effectiveness of adult learning methods employed in one redesigned course. We share emerging themes from this work and discuss implications for our program and recommendations for teacher preparation programs pursuing similar teacher preparation pathways.
Although rural students over the past decade have increasingly pursued online degree options, they encounter obstacles to online learning. We invite instructors as individuals and institutions as collectives to consider four steps to spur a holistic, multipoint action plan for rural-inclusive teaching and learning practices. The four steps include: educate yourself about rural realities, humanize teaching and learning, analyze course requirements for barriers to equity, and advocate for technological access.
This study examines the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools—specifically ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft’s Copilot—in a graduate-level course preparing future faculty members. Through a mixed-methods approach combining pre- and post-course surveys with structured observations, the researcher investigated how these AI tools influenced students’ engagement, learning outcomes, and development of teaching competencies. The study, conducted with graduate students in a University Teaching in Human Sciences course, revealed significant improvements in students’ AI knowledge and confidence in using AI tools for educational purposes. Findings indicate that while AI tools enhanced productivity and collaborative learning, their effectiveness depended heavily on structured facilitation and intentional integration with evidence-based teaching practices. The study provides insights into both the opportunities and challenges of incorporating AI in higher education pedagogy, particularly in the context of preparing future faculty members.
Democratic erosion in the United States, and the global decline of support for democratic values and institutions, obliges us to reflect on how we introduce politics to undergraduate students in this challenging era. Recent attacks on democratic rights and academic freedoms on college campuses, as well as the undermining of rule of law and democratic norms in the United States and abroad, compels us to reconsider and reflect on how we introduce politics and civic engagement in the classroom to our students. In this essay, we reflect on how current global and national trends in populism and authoritarianism require us to teach politics courses differently than in the past. We then identify the content, skills, and values we need to emphasize and continue to train students under the stressors of anti-democratic norms and legislation in the United States and around the world. We also identify our responsibilities as educators, as we promote civic and political engagement which may expose students to risks of political repression and even violence. Lastly, we propose ways to help students identify and understand their support for and satisfaction with the current state of democracy and critically evaluate the alternatives.
In this paper, I discuss a fundamental problem for most instructors: how should we weight the different assessments within our course in order to evaluate students effectively? Using a framework which connects curriculum and assessment design, I demonstrate that “fair” evaluation requires a close (and quantitatively measurable) connection between learning outcomes and assessment weighting. I use this framework to provide guidance for optimal assessment design practices, and evaluate a number of commonly-used teaching practices – concluding that many of them pose problems in terms of fairness, when not carefully implemented. I also discuss the implications of alternative grading schemes or other complications for this framework. I finally provide a detailed example of applying these principles to a real-world course, and a toolkit, for use by instructors in evaluating or designing their own courses.
This study explores the integration of industry certifications in higher education as a pedagogical tool to expand understanding of students' perceptions of their contribution to course efficacy, learning outcomes, and overall career preparedness. While previous research examines the broader implications of digitalization and its impact on higher education, there is a scarcity of research investigating student perceptions of the impact of industry certifications in preparing students for the workforce. The quantitative, causal comparative study highlights a favorable alignment between industry certifications and perceptions of academic learning outcomes, supporting the hypotheses that incorporating certifications can enhance the overall learning experience and career preparedness. The findings shed light on the adaptability and versatility of industry certifications across different academic fields, illustrating their potential to complement and enhance traditional coursework, foster student development, and career preparedness. This study proposes actionable recommendations for use of industry certifications in a way that recognizes benefits and optimizes college departments’ use of the pedagogical tool to better equip students for increasingly competitive workplaces.
This article describes a virtual reality (VR) CAVE project designed and created to contextualize the reading of blues poetry within the history and sound of the blues in the United States. The project aimed to provide students with a better understanding of the blues as a musical form so that the nuances of the blues poems of Langston Hughes would be more readily understood, thereby improving comprehension of form and elevating classroom discussion for a humanities seminar. Students navigate the space within a virtual blues joint to access biographical and geographical information about blues musicians and regional sound, as well as to listen to songs and poems and to watch “live” performance. The article includes details of Langston Hughes’ poetic project and the selected poems, the navigable features of the VR project, and student journal responses to the experience, showing the value added to comprehension by accessing the music in a holistic approach.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of creative thinking challenges on teacher education students’ perceptions of learning and engagement and their creative attitudes and values. Researchers provided creative thinking challenges that promoted divergent thinking, metaphorical thinking, and creative problem-solving. Participants completed a post-only survey with Likert-style questions and open-ended responses to determine if the creative challenges enhanced student perceptions of learning, motivation, and engagement with the topics studied. Thematic analysis was used to determine student perception of the creative activities, their influence on personal creative abilities, and how the participants would promote creativity in their own classrooms. In addition, participants completed a pre and post-assessment, the Creative Attitudes and Values (CAV) which is a 25-item self-report that is part of the Runco Creativity Assessment Battery (rCAB). Results indicate that the challenges enhanced learning and engagement. Additionally, results of the CAV indicated a statistically significant difference in scores from pre to post indicating the creativity challenges increased the participants’ creative attitudes and values.
This paper provides a critical reflection on a Global Classroom project in psychiatric mental health nursing. It describes the implementation of the project including opportunities for learning and challenges experienced during the project. The project was an intercultural collaborative classroom activity that focused on substance-related and addictive disorders (SAD) with the overarching goal of reducing stigma related to SAD. The project started in August through December 2022 when students were asked to select addictive substances explored throughout the semester; develop a project plan; and prepare SAD health teaching for 20 attendees at their end-of-semester virtual presentation. At the end of the activity, we observed that students from both universities had little or no experience with people different from themselves and that most participating students would have benefited from cultural humility and intercultural communication training to help them navigate issues encountered as the project progressed. Insight gained might help faculty as they plan future projects.
Undergraduate students in in-person service-learning (SL) courses demonstrate higher gains than their peers in academic achievement (AAO), civic engagement (CEO), social skills (SSO), and attitudes toward themselves (ATS) and learning (ALO), but these gains are inconsistent across SL literature. Diverse SL strategies are considered a source of this disparity, yet little is known about how specific strategies influence students’ learning outcomes. This study describes the effectiveness of undergraduate SL and details how instructional strategies impact undergraduate learning outcomes. We synthesized findings from 62 SL studies that compared SL to a control group. Moderator analysis demonstrated impacts of instructional strategies and contextual factors. Aggregated results showed SL had a positive effect on student outcomes (d = 0.37, p < .001). ATS demonstrated the largest effect followed by SSO, AAO, ALO, and CEO. The aggregated effect was moderated by the study’s design, the type of instrument used to measure outcomes, and four common SL strategies. Our findings provide further support for SL’s efficacy and demonstrate that SL strategies influence students’ learning outcomes. Recommendations for future research include exploring the consequences of SL strategies, including contextual information for SL programs, and more thorough reporting of statistical data.
Around the world, students of all ages are becoming increasingly stressed. Academic stress and test anxiety are two aspects of education-based stress that have been studied since the 1980s. Despite attempts to identify myriad predictors and to develop interventions that can mitigate these two educational impediments, undergraduate students continue to report high levels of stress. The current study was an opportunistic study that investigated the effect of the Coronavirus 2020 pandemic on academic stress and test anxiety among 200 undergraduate students at two primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) with different ethnic and SES compositions. The study also assessed the influence of the presence of a pet on reported academic stress and test anxiety levels. No difference was found between levels of academic stress or test anxiety for students evaluated before the pandemic began, when transitioning to a pandemic status, or during the pandemic with quarantine in effect. Moreover, the presence of a pet did not mediate the self-reported levels for either academic stress or test anxiety. However, academic stress and test anxiety levels were at an all-time high compared to previous cohorts assessed across multiple decades with females showing a greater vulnerability in both areas of stress. These results highlight the critical importance of identifying factors that are driving these stressors and developing effective interventions for undergraduate students to manage their stress levels.
In higher education, student evaluation of teaching (SET) has been under scrutiny for its lack of validity, weak correlation with student learning, and bias toward historically marginalized faculty. Absent from the literature are the psychological and financial implications of negative SETs. In an exploratory mixed methods study of 344 instructors, our findings reveal that the majority of respondents have been impacted both psychologically and financially. Female faculty and faculty of color are disproportionately affected psychologically with female faculty reporting negative affective experiences for 5 to 20+ years. Common reasons include feelings of powerlessness, frustrations with SETs as a metric for teacher quality, and biases linked to instructors' identities. Financially, both female faculty and faculty of color were more likely to report measurable and immeasurable financial losses, ranging from denial of promotion to additional time for student care or decreased time to advance one’s career. The pressure on historically marginalized faculty to counter bias in SETs has wide-ranging psychological and financial repercussions, which underscores the labor inequities of an unjust system of assessment and the ethical implications of universities and colleges requiring faculty to review biased, and at times, abusive student comments.
Student feedback and assessment are vital for promoting student growth and learning. Timely feedback is crucial and associated with positive impact on learnings outcomes (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Incorporating self-assessment and reflection into the feedback process enhances metacognitive skills and contributes to a deeper understanding. Customizing feedback to individual needs, aligning it with learning goals, and utilizing various feedback methods contribute to more effective learning outcomes (Sadler, 1989; Carless & Boud, 2018). To address these areas related to feedback and assessment, we have begun using check-in meetings to assess and provide feedback to students in our teacher education program.
Faculty development is widely agreed upon as necessary and beneficial, particularly for newly hired academics. However, the demands on new faculty are exceedingly high, particularly to meet the needs of tenure. New faculty often lack collegial community and support, and experience stress and overwhelm while struggling to meet institutional demands. Building on previous studies positing that workshop participation rather than specific workshop content can foster faculty development, this reflective essay argues that a workshop aimed at meeting faculty members’ needs in the context of their institutions can help faculty development without unnecessarily increasing the burden on (new) faculty. Specifically, we reflect on our experiences participating in a Teaching Portfolio Workshop and argue that such a workshop can fulfill the dual purposes of meeting new faculty development needs and fostering community and can be particularly significant for developing faculty engagement in post-Covid academic institutions of higher education. We draw from the literature on communities of practice and teaching portfolios as well as our experiences as a group of new faculty at an urban commuter institution in a virtual Teaching Portfolio Workshop. We make recommendations for other institutions and faculty to develop similar workshops.
This study examines the extent to which timing of supervisor allocation, module commencement date, and mode of delivery (e.g., hybrid, campus-based, fully remote) impacts on MA dissertation students’ final dissertation projects. The study collected data from 240 masters’ students at a post-92 university, undertaking their dissertation during the global pandemic and without access to a campus or in-personal teaching and tutorials. The students had different supervision patterns, course start times, and access to campus for other essential modules (as allowed under the rules of the time), which provided us with important data about how these facts affected students learning and completing of their dissertation. Engagement was measured in regards to completion of the online units, as well as scores on these. Data were also collected in relation to students’ opinions regarding their experience completing the online units as well as their general experience through the dissertation process. Results saw that supervisor allocation was the most important factor when it came to final dissertation scores and engagement with the online materials.
This paper details the author’s experiences combining mastery-based and blended learning in Calculus II and Differential Equations courses at a smaller private college in Pennsylvania. Practical considerations for the course structure, the management of assessments, and learning outcomes are shared. Data concerning mastery of each outcome, number of attempts on each outcome, gains between each attempt, and grade distributions are given. DFW rates in mastery-based blended learning courses are compared with historical rates in the author’s more traditional format versions of the courses.
Traditional preparation in teaching for college and university faculty primarily relies on informal mentoring in which faculty often teach in a manner similar to how they were taught (Barr & Tagg,1995; Oleson & Hora, 2014; Pallas et al., 2017; Schroeder, 2022; Wieman, 2019). Recognizing there is a distinction between a content expert and an expert teacher of content (Boyer, 1990; Shulman, 1986, 1987), the problem this study sought to investigate is the disjunction between how faculty teach and how students learn best. This quantitative study explored the relationship between how faculty were taught in their undergraduate studies and how they teach their undergraduate students. The overarching research question guiding this study was, “How do inherited mindsets and pedagogies influence undergraduate teaching?” The Comparative Teaching Paradigms, a researcher-designed conceptual framework, served as the source for the survey instrument and data analysis. The findings revealed an apparent disconnect between faculty’s reported teaching beliefs and their teaching practices.
Critical thinking is often noted as lacking in today’s workforce, but research has demonstrated that critical thinking can be taught while improving students’ course content information retention. However, new reports reveal inadequate inclusion of critical thinking andragogy in the curriculum. Given this dichotomy, this study aimed to use a behaviorally-anchored competency-based model to asses students’ self-perceived critical thinking behavioral change in a one-semester treatment. Instructors used the QUEEN Critical Thinking Model, a behaviorally-anchored competency-based approach critical thinking model and assessment, to teach and evaluate critical thinking behaviors to students in an upper-level leadership ethics course. QUEEN Student Self-Assessment indicates students’ critical thinking behaviors increased significantly over one semester. To prepare students to close the essential skills gap, we recommend instructors purposefully design learning strategies that teach critical thinking behaviors. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that using high-impact andragogical methodology to apply the QUEEN Model of Critical Thinking is effective for integrating critical thinking behaviors into established college classes to increase students’ self-perceived critical thinking behaviors.
