Team-Based Learning in Honors Science Education: The Benefit of Complex Writing Assignments

Cooperative learning and team-based learning have been widely recognized as beneficial strategies to improve all levels of education, including higher education. The benefits have been widely researched and are now well-established (Johnson et al.; Michaelsen, Bauman Knight, et al.; Michaelsen & Sweet; Slavin; Springer et al.). The studies have indicated a positive relationship between cooperative learning and student effort, achievement, persistence, and motivation. Just forming groups, however, does not automatically lead to better learning and motivation; cooperation flourishes only under appropriate conditions (Fink; Gillies; Parmelee et al.). This potential for cooperation and learning is maximal when groups are structured in such a way that students understand what is expected of them and how they are supposed to work together (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith; Michaelsen & Sweet)

Cultivating Two Aspects of Intellectual Humility: Openness and Care

We believe that intellectual humility is an essential intellectual virtue for university students to foster. It enables them to excel as students of philosophy and other disciplines, to navigate the fast-changing world inside and outside academia, and to flourish in interaction with others. In this paper, we analyze this virtue by singling out two distinct but related aspects: the openness-aspect and the care-aspect. The former makes one value a dialogue with those who have different views from one’s own. The latter aspect involves searching for implicit assumptions one brings to encounters with one’s object of inquiry and trying to study this object as unique and irreducible. We discuss four learning activities we developed for the philosophy bachelor course “Who are we? Philosophical views on humans and the gods” at University College Utrecht (the Netherlands). Throughout this paper, we show extracts from the students’ assignments, reflections, and evaluations. These extracts indicate that students developed both aspects of intellectual humility —openness to different views and care for the uniqueness of each object of inquiry— and acknowledged their importance.</jats:p

Teacher dilemmas in challenging students in higher education

Students need to be challenged to stimulate their learning. Applying challenge in practice however is not straightforward. Challenging students may conflict with other teacher responsibilities, creating potential dilemmas for teachers. This study discloses dilemmas teachers encounter when challenging students as well as the considerations accompanying their actual choices for action when coping with these dilemmas. Based on interviews with teachers, first, a dilemma analysis instrument was developed. Seven main categories of dilemmas were found. One of the main dilemmas encompassed maximizing challenge versus keeping all students on board. University students differ in their ability, confronting teachers with the feeling that choosing to serve one group could be detrimental to the learning of others. The diversity of choices and considerations brought forward by the teachers indicates that it matters who the teacher is, and what he or she stands for and is able to do

Be Prepared! How Pre-lab Modules Affect Students’ Understanding of Gene Mapping

Lab activities are characteristic of life science education. In the current study, we investigate whether pre-lab modules can improve students’ understanding of the theories and experimental procedures associated with lab activities. Such effects were studied in context of an expository lab on gene mapping in biology undergraduate education. An experimental group of 126 students had access to an online pre-lab module to prepare for the lab activity; a control group of 90 students did not have access to this pre-lab module. The data revealed that students who studied the pre-lab module had a better understanding of the gene mapping theory, at the onset of the class, when compared with the control group. Additionally, these students appeared to ask fewer questions on what needed to be done in the lab, suggesting more awareness of the experimental procedure. Further, students who studied the online pre-lab module showed greater understanding of the theory in their lab reports. These findings suggest that students’ understanding of background theory and its relation to practice can readily be improved by enriching existing expository labs with pre-lab modules that contain information and questions on the complex conceptual information relevant to the lab experiment

Pop-up Questions Within Educational Videos: Effects on Students’ Learning

Educational videos are increasingly used to let students prepare lesson material at home prior to in-class activities in flipped classrooms. The main challenge of this teaching strategy is to stimulate students to watch these videos attentively before going to class. This paper describes the use of questions that pop-up within relatively long educational videos of 16 min on average and designed to enhance students’ engagement and understanding when preparing for in-class activities. The effects of such pop-up questions on students’ learning performance were studied within a flipped course in molecular biology. Students had access to videos with or without a variable set of pop-up questions. The experimental group with pop-up questions showed significantly higher test results compared to the group without pop-up questions. Interestingly, students that answered pop-up questions on certain concepts did not score better on items testing these specific concepts than the control group. These results suggest that merely the presence of pop-up questions enhances students’ learning. Additional data from interviews, surveys, and learning analytics suggest that pop-up questions influence viewing behavior, likely by promoting engagement. It is concluded that pop-up questions stimulate learning when studying videos outside class through an indirect testing effect