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Biomedical engineering (BME) spans a wide range of research fields and professional activities. Most BME departments use a seminar series to introduce graduate students to exciting research conducted outside their own university, learn about professional opportunities, and enhance their understanding of related topics (e.g., ethics in BME, engineering education, entrepreneurship). However, even a stellar lineup of expert seminar speakers cannot appeal to all graduate students--even though the information presented may be very important to that student in the future. Can we initiate active learning assignments to increase student engagement with all speakers? Our BME department developed a strategy to scaffold active learning activities to enhance student engagement in the graduate seminars. All speakers supplied three papers for advance reading and students were required to generate questions based on reading the papers. The questions were provided to the speakers in advance of the seminar. Both students and speakers submitted short reflection surveys after the seminar. With increasing graduate experience, students were also required to critique the articles, evaluate presentation styles, and answer the questions of other students. The requirement to read the papers and generate questions definitely increased student engagement with the speakers. The increased personal engagement was evident in the critical thinking by the students as they subsequently discussed trends in different fields, evaluated presentation styles, and learned about different career opportunities. The increase in student engagement had the added benefit of creating a positive impression of our students with the speakers visiting from other institutions.

Critical thinking is a common and important learning outcome in college curricula. Case-based and problem-based learning can be used to assess and foster critical thinking skills. HNF 250--Contemporary Issues in Human Nutrition is a critical thinking course developed during the redesign of a nutritional sciences major program. Course assignments were designed to assess the course and nutritional sciences major learning outcomes. The nutrition and health claim assignment is scaffolded across the academic semester as three assignments: (1) bibliography assignment; (2) poster presentation; and (3) paper. Course lectures and materials have been designed to prepare students for completion of each assignment. The assignments have been modified over time based on classroom observations and student performance. In 2021, the course learning outcomes were examined by assessing several assignments including the nutrition and health claim poster and paper. Course learning outcome benchmarks using these assessments generally included 80% of students achieving an 80% for each criterion. Results revealed that students were not meeting most of these assessment benchmarks during the 2021 iteration, although benchmark data from other course assessments were more satisfactory. It is possible that the transition from a virtual to an in-person format negatively influenced student performance on these course learning outcomes. This course and the nutrition and health claim assignment example can provide a course design and learning outcome assessment framework for other higher education critical thinking courses.

Recently, learning environments have transformed from traditional, lecture-based learning environments to team-based, experiential and problem-based learning to prepare learners for a more complex and collaborative world. One teaching approach that embodies these essential characteristics of learning is gamification. Gamification is the application of gamified thinking and game mechanics to solve problems and increase engagement (Çeker & Özdam, 2017) [1]. Gamification is characterized by its ability to achieve cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects by giving students opportunities to improve their critical thinking skills, arouse their feelings of curiosity, and increase active participation, respectively. However, considering gamification as an approach for education and learning is still a controversial subject. It is our position of this paper that as educators, we believe that gamification engages learners, motivates them to learn, satisfy their needs, and transfers knowledge by fun tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students in Honors Physical Geology at Louisiana State University (LSU) participated in instruction in eighth- to ninth-grade geology and geography classes in East Baton Rouge Parish Schools (EBRPS) to help meet community needs. LSU students created instructional materials and reflected on the service activity to gain a deeper understanding of course objectives, an appreciation of Earth science as it relates to the global community, and an enhanced sense of civic responsibility. The service-learning project focused on an historical volcanic eruption and consisted of four parts distributed throughout the semester: K-12 teacher interview, research paper, poster and presentation to peers, and classroom teaching. Reflection, peer review, teamwork, and revision were emphasized. Presentations focused on Earth Science Literacy Initiative (ESLI)'s "Big Ideas" (e.g., humans can mitigate but not control natural hazards). LSU students' perception of their learning from reflections/class evaluations indicated that they moved from "remembering-understanding" to "analyzing-evaluating-creating" within Bloom's Taxonomy hierarchy. LSU students also gained valuable experience in creating, reviewing, and revising written and oral communication. Based on K-12 teacher responses, EBRPS students learned about volcanoes, deepened their understanding of plate tectonics, and learned about college. Service learning requires a strong desire for collaboration among all participants. Communication and coordination are vital to success so that everyone has the same expectations, knows his/her role, and problems are identified and resolved.

Critical thinking skills play a vital role in a knowledge society and have a direct influence on the quality of teaching and learning. We aim at highlighting the way in which the graduation paper in Translation Studies can become an excellent opportunity to encourage students to test the applicability of key concepts from this field and to tackle research systematically. Based on our experience of supervising graduation papers on translation studies-related topics, we have identified students' typical approaches and recurring difficulties. This allows us to suggest possible solutions for the problems encountered, depending on each stage of the process. Our purpose as supervisors is to endow students with the cognitive flexibility they need in order to draw up an adequate research plan, use translation assessment criteria creatively and hone their critical skills for future real-life situations.

The authors of this article write that, as college teachers, they continue to confront their own timidity, and fear of risk. They have had to ask themselves when, in lip service to academic rigor, they are just taking the safe way out. They say that they worry at times while admonishing students to think for themselves, come up with new ideas, and take intellectual risks if they have failed both in the design of their assignments, and in their assignment methods. Over the past few years, the two of them have experimented, played, and tried to push themselves away from their comfort zones to challenge themselves and their students in new ways. In the two sections presented here, these two authors discuss their attempts to encourage honors college students to take risks and to engage with course material in creative ways that develop their critical thinking skills. Kate Wintrol discusses her struggles in an introductory survey course to design creative assignments, that encourage critical thinking while Maria Jerinic analyzes her efforts in an upper-level seminar to encourage students to produce creative products that deviate from standard academic research assignments. They offer experiences in response to the public conversation surrounding the nature of U.S. education at all levels.

The aim of this study is to present the possibilities of nurse education in the use of the Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT) tool to support the documentation process. The success of the nursing process is based on the accuracy of nursing diagnoses, which also determine nursing interventions and nursing outcomes. Educating nurses in the use of artificial intelligence in the nursing process can significantly reduce the time nurses spend on documentation. Discussion paper. We used a case study from Train4Health in the field of preventive care to demonstrate the potential of using Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT) to educate nurses in documenting the nursing process using generative artificial intelligence. Based on the case study, we entered a description of the patient's condition into Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT) and asked questions about nursing diagnoses, nursing interventions and nursing outcomes. We further synthesized these results. In the process of educating nurses about the nursing process and nursing diagnosis, Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT) can present potential patient problems to nurses and guide them through the process from taking a medical history, setting nursing diagnoses and planning goals and interventions. Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT) returned appropriate nursing diagnoses, but these were not in line with the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association – International (NANDA-I) classification as requested. Of all the nursing diagnoses provided, only one was consistent with the most recent version of the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association – International (NANDA-I). Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT) is still not specific enough for nursing diagnoses, resulting in incorrect answers in several cases. Using Generative Pre-training Transformer (ChatGPT) to educate nurses and support the documentation process is time-efficient, but it still requires a certain level of human critical-thinking and fact-checking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical thinking is often absent from classroom endeavor because it is hard to define (Gelder, 2005) or is difficult to assess (Bissell & Lemons, 2006). Critical thinking is defined as application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Browne & Minnick, 2005). This paper shows how self-experimentation and single-subject methodology can be used to promote many levels of critical thinking in an Applied Behavior Analysis course. Two classroom assignment examples of this process and a grading rubric are provided. (Contains 1 figure.)

Yulin Normal University preschool education major existing children's game course instructional model more in passing test knowledge and practice test skills, students used to passively accept knowledge, rarely use critical thinking to treat knowledge, with a critical eye to question, thinking, and discovery, long-term students will not be able to adapt to the needs of the new era of social development of survival ability and professional competitiveness. Therefore, the objectives of this study were (1) to study the factors affecting the development of critical thinking ability, (2) to develop an instructional model based on experiential learning theory and six thinking hats, and (3) to compare the critical thinking ability of Third Year college students before and after the instructional model of experiential learning theory and six thinking hats. The sample group was 30 students from preschool education majors at Yulin Normal University. The research was conducted in three steps: studying the factors that affect the development of critical thinking ability, developing the instructional model, and the experimental and improvement process. The research instruments were a questionnaire about factors that affect the development of critical thinking ability, an interview form about factors that affect the development of college students' critical thinking ability, an observation form about student behavior, an interview form about opinions on teaching, lesson plans, and a critical thinking ability test. The study's results were 1) the main factors affecting the development of critical thinking ability include the instructional environment, the teachers, and the students, respectively, 2) the instructional model based on experiential learning theory and six thinking hats was developed consisting of four core components: a) principles, b) objectives, c) learning process, and d) results, and 3) after the implementation of the instructional model based on experiential learning theory and six thinking hats, the critical thinking ability scores of the students were higher than the critical thinking ability of the students before the experiment, with a statistical significance of 0.01 level. Finally, this paper strives to develop a based on Experiential Learning Theory and Six Thinking Hats instructional model to improve the critical thinking of preschool education students at Yulin Normal University.

The development of university students’ skills to successfully produce scientific documents has been a recurring topic of study in academia. This paper analyzes the implementation of a training experience using a digital environment mediated by video content materials starring humanoid robots. The research aimed to scale complex thinking and its sub-competencies as a hinge to strengthen basic academic research skills. Students from Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico committed to preparing a scientific document as part of their professional training participated. A pretest to know their initial level of perception, a posttest to evaluate if there was a change, and a scientific document the students delivered at the end of the training experience comprised the methodology to demonstrate the improvement of their skills. The results indicated students’ perceived improvement in the sub-competencies of systemic, creative, scientific, and innovative thinking; however, their perceptions did not align with that of the tutor who reviewed the delivered scientific product. The conclusion was that although the training experience helped strengthen the students’ skills, variables that are determinants for a student to develop the knowledge necessary to prepare scientific documents and their derived products remain to be analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Fall 2009 term, we participated as students and instructor in a graduate education course modeled after participatory pedagogy. Siemens (2008) defines this approach as "one that does not fully define all curricular needs in advance of interacting with learners...Multiple perspectives, opinions, and active creation on the part of learners all contribute to the final context of the learner experience." Since completing this course, we have continued our collaborative travel reflecting on our course experiences and how this learning has affected us beyond the course boundaries. In this synthesis of our journey we invite readers to join us in understanding the impact of this pedagogical approach and its transformative possibilities.

Businesses and higher education leaders are looking for students with the ability to evaluate and analyze information and to use this information to solve real-world problems. These are the information literacy skills students need for the 21st century. However, several recent studies on the ability of college freshmen to handle the rigor of college courses and research indicate that high school students are not being adequately prepared to apply these skills. The authors provide a case study of a collaborative effort between an English teacher and the high school librarian to better prepare high school seniors on how to locate reliable information, analyze the information and then determine how it can be applied to solving a real world issue or problem.