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Lecturing has been criticized for fostering a passive learning environment, emphasizing a one-way flow of information, and not adequately engaging students. In contrast, active-learning approaches, such as team-based learning (TBL), prioritize student interaction and engagement and create multidirectional flows of information. This paper presents an exploratory analysis of whether lecturing or TBL was better for teaching content; developing skills, such as critical thinking; and creating an enjoyable learning environment in a sociology course. Results showed few differences in these outcomes between groups taught with the two different methods, although TBL students thought they improved their oral communication and creative thinking skills more than the lecture students, and they reported getting to know their professor and classmates more than did the lecture students.

The effects of cities on the subjective states of individuals have been the subject of continuous inquiry. Recent research has demonstrated potential links between immediate environments and individual outcomes such as perceived powerlessness. However, the results of such studies are inconsistent and fail to account for the greater societal environment in which observations occur. Using a more comparative, cross-national sample and multi-level modeling, we retest the expectation that the immediate physical and social environment influences feelings of powerlessness, and extend the test to consider urbanism operating at societal levels beyond the local. Controlling for demographic composition, we find that urban factors operating at both societal and local levels are important predictors of self-efficacy and powerlessness. While one factor was found to correspond with decreased self-efficacy, two aspects of urban environments--one local and one societal--are found to be consistent with Simmel's assertion that urban settings increase individual feelings of efficacy and freedom. The implications of these findings for urban theory are discussed. (Contains 3 tables and 9 footnotes.)

ABSTRACT Studies on urbanism often suggest a link between urbanites and increased tolerance. While this claim is usually supported in the literature, most research is hampered by several limitations: it focuses almost exclusively on the United States, it neglects classical arguments that phenomena of urbanism are both macro-level and local, and it does not direct attention to the different mechanisms through which urbanism is believed to operate. In this article, the authors reexamine the tolerance-producing capacity of urbanism by addressing these limitations. Drawing on a large cross-national sample, this study uses multilevel modeling to examine urban factors at both the local and societal level, as well as two measures of tolerance to account for the different forms it might take depending on competing conceptualizations. Findings are that local urban environments promote tolerance cross-nationally, and that societal level urbanization is significantly associated with tolerance, but the effect is not always positive. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these patterns and their impact on our understanding of urban tolerance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]