I believe that one of the most fundamental trends occurring in our economies—or, at least, in the world's most developed market economies—is that an ever-increasing part of our wealth is being generated by the so-called knowledge economy as opposed to agrarian, resource-based or industrial production. This shift has been taking place since the start of the industrial revolution; its visible res...

We investigate an interactive teaching scenario, where a human teaches a robot symbols which abstract the geometric properties of objects. There are multiple motivations for this scenario: First, state-of-the-art methods for relational reinforcement learning demonstrate that we can learn and employ strongly generalizing abstract models with great success for goal-directed object manipulation. H...

The Genome Consortium for Active Teaching (GCAT) facilitates the use of modern genomics methods in undergraduate education. Initially focused on microarray technology, but with an eye toward diversification, GCAT is a community working to improve the education of tomorrow's life science professionals. GCAT participants have access to affordable microarrays, microarray scanners, free software fo...

Nurse educators, under pressure to prepare graduates who are able to think critically and solve problems in a variety of clinical practice settings, require active teaching strategies to promote meaningful learning, instead of relying on traditional methods that promote rote memorization. A review of the current state of the science with regard to concept mapping demonstrates that this teaching...

Pedagogy and andragogy are models of education based, respectively, on passive and active learning. This project compared two balanced sections of an undergraduate course in physiology. Both sections used the pedagogical method of didactic lectures to present basic material. Students in section 01 were given multiple-choice examinations, a pedagogical procedure, over the lecture content for the...

The introduction of active learning in engineering education is often started by enthusiastic teachers or change agents. They usually encounter resistance from stakeholders such as colleagues, department boards or students. For a successful introduction these stakeholders all have to learn what active learning involves for them. This means that active learning has to take place on three levels:...

OBJECTIVES To assess students' performance and perceptions of team-based and mixed active-learning methods in 2 ambulatory care elective courses, and to describe faculty members' perceptions of team-based learning. METHODS Using the 2 teaching methods, students' grades were compared. Students' perceptions were assessed through 2 anonymous course evaluation instruments. Faculty members who tau...

As a graduate student at a research-intensive, medical institution, most of my responsibilities and focus have been in performing experiments and getting published in high-quality journals like the American Journal of Physiology-Heart and Circulatory Physiology. However, teaching opportunities for young investigators are hard to come by and require active searching while balancing courses and r...

Numerous studies have established that active participation in the learning process is more effective in a learning environment that emulates a real-world learning environment. In a traditional teaching and learning environment, only little learning is taking place in the classroom even though there appears to be an active shift of information. Studies have also clearly established that the rol...

This project involved the use of two small, closely matched non-majors introductory biology classes to test the use of the Jigsaw method of teaching vs. a passive, instructor-oriented model of teaching. In this study, the Jigsaw method was used as a jumping off point for the teaching-learning of the material. Students were to learn the concepts of the chapters through the Jigsaw method and thei...