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Teaching methods such as Flipped Learning and Team-Based Learning require students to pre-learn course materials before a teaching session, because classroom exercises rely on students using self-gained knowledge. This is the reverse to “traditional” teaching when course materials are presented during a lecture, and students are assessed on that material during another session at a later stage. The purpose of this paper is to describe an introductory class session that prepares and engages students to be successful participants in courses requiring pre-learning.

A sequence of seven learning activities drawn from the education literature was implemented in an introductory undergraduate entrepreneurship class. These activities were evaluated using exploratory qualitative research.

Student evaluations of the learning activities showed that they readily identified important aspects of learning, critical factors related to student success, and the learning purposes of the introductory session.

The sequence of seven activities develops a positive learning culture where students understand their obligations regarding pre-learning, and are prepared for active engagement in the course. These also give the educator valuable information for understanding the learning motivations, expectations, and perceptions of student learners, that allows teaching approaches to be tailored to the needs of that class.

The sequence of learning activities is novel and gives both students and educators insights into learning processes required for effective pre-learning for active engagement in student-centred classes. This approach can be applied in different fields of higher education.

Preparing future teachers requires teacher educators to share both theory and its translation to best practice. Traditional approaches to this learning process include textbooks, case studies, role-play, observation, and eventually fieldwork in a classroom. Understanding what their future students need or appropriately responding to situations in the classroom is far different than the reality of teaching in schools. Although case studies provide an opportunity for perspective taking, collaboration, and developing problem solving skills in a safe environment, it is still a relatively passive experience. The use of virtual worlds to create engaging simulations offers a possibility in bridging this gap between theory and practice. The School of Education and Human Services at Seton Hall University has designed a virtual world simulation to provide college students with the opportunity to be immersed in a virtual classroom setting in which they take on the roles of avatar teachers and grade school students who may require various modifications/accommodations. This chapter will discuss the design and implementation of this project. Data were collected on the students’ experiences in order to assess possible learning gains, affordances of the technology, and lessons learned for future educators who are considering the implementation of virtual world technologies.

Entrepreneurship education is rapidly growing, both in the number of schools offering programs and in the range of courses. But, survey data shows that entrepreneurship education is more likely to focus on how to evaluate business opportunities, write a business plan, present a proposal to investors, and conduct analytical exercises to determine value. The success of a venture begins with the entrepreneur, and as students become entrepreneurs, they will need to wear a variety of “hats” and serve as the primary finance, marketing, human resources, and operations person. High self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, and well-developed interpersonal skills have been shown to equate to a firmʼs success.These skills are rarely polished and perfected in the classroom. But, because they are so critical, more concentration on their development is needed in the entrepreneurship curriculum. This article presents the case and provides a model for developing “Use of Self” skills in the entrepreneurship classroom.

This article highlights the value of close co‐ operation and understanding between those inthe public, private and voluntary sectors who have the responsibility for planning and responding to major incidents. Multi‐agency response and co‐operation can be improved through joint planning and exercises which serve to validate plans, enable staff to familiarise themselves with the arrangements and assist in training. The whole plan or just part of it may be exercised according to need, and may involve participation by one or more agencies. It has to be decided who needs to be exercised and which type of exercise is appropriate, for example paper feed, table‐top, communications‐simulated or live. When staging exercise, it is important to plan, conduct and supervise them in a way which will ensure maximum benefit to all participants, enhance response safely and enable weaknesses in the plans to be revealed and corrected.

This paper aims to compare the nature of three different business and management education (BME) research streams (online/blended learning, entrepreneurship education and experiential learning), along with their citation sources to draw insights on their support and legitimacy bases, with lessons on improving such support and legitimacy for the streams and the wider BME research field.

The authors analyze the nature of three BME research streams and their citation sources through tests of differences across streams.

The three streams differ in research foci and approaches such as the use of managerial samples in experiential learning, quantitative studies in online/blended education and literature reviews in entrepreneurship education. They also differ in sources of legitimacy recognition and avenues for mobilization of support. The underlying literature development pattern of the experiential learning stream indicates a need for BME scholars to identify and build on each other’s work.

Identification of different research bases and key supporting literature in the different streams shows important core articles that are useful to build research in each stream.

Readers will understand the different research bases supporting the three research streams, along with their targeted audience and practice implications.

The discovery of different support bases for the three different streams helps identify the network of authors and relationships that have been built in each stream.

According to the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to uncover differences in nature and citation sources of the three continuously growing BME research streams with recommendations on ways to improve the support of the three streams.

Explores the complex feelings which can surround the subject of abortion and the difficulty some teachers may experience in trying to reconcile their personal beliefs with their professional responsibilities. Gives reasons for including abortion in the school curriculum rather than relying on parents/carers to cover the subject at home. Looks at how the subject of abortion can fit into different areas of the curriculum. Provides a classroom exercise which examines some of the influences which can affect a person′s attitude towards abortion.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential of life story for the teaching of sociology to Social Work students. It contains the results of a teaching experiment in higher education which aims to foster sociological imagination among students.

The study employs a mixed methodology. The quantitative data came from a survey handed out to the students with closed and open questions. The qualitative information came from the contents of class exercises in which the students had to connect the theoretical contents of the course of sociology with the biographical narratives of different research subjects.

The results reflect student satisfaction or appreciation regarding the use of the life story as a teaching resource, as well as a successful acquisition of sociological skills and knowledge, such as critical thinking, micro-macro connection and the interplay between structure and agency.

Life story and narrative methods should be employed in post-secondary education as teaching instruments.

The study contributes to expand the reflection on narrative techniques as a pedagogical tool. The paper provides several examples of class exercises with biographical narratives that have demonstrated to be successful for teaching sociology in higher education.

This paper aims to argue that the process of making an original game develops digital literacy skills and provides an authentic learning experience as students create, publish and deploy interactive games. Teaching students to create computer games has become common in both K-12 and tertiary education to introducing programming concepts, increase student engagement and recruit majors and minors in technology fields. This study describes a project where first-year college students in an introductory technology concepts course use a visual game creation tool to develop original games to play on their computers and mobile devices.

The author created a game development exercise which was implemented in three different sections of an introductory technology course. Students who participated were surveyed about their experiences. In addition, the author considers information technology (IT) skills and aspects of authentic learning which are achieved through this assignment.

Initial findings suggest that students found the gaming assignment offers an opportunity for students with no prior programming skills to create software within a controlled and supportive environment. It allows them to demonstrate their understanding of coding principles, including identifying objects and interactions, and that creating software requires a developer to specify exact instructions for the computer to follow.

This study is limited to results from one semester and a small number of students participating. In addition, student frustration with the complicated process of publishing games online may have influenced student attitudes toward the assignment.

Challenges of implementing this study on a larger scale are discussed.

Creating games encourages collaborative learning through trial and error, and students who share their games with friends to play on their devices achieve a sense of pride.

While most studies of game development emphasize the programming skills that are developed through creating computer games, this paper looks at a larger scope of digital literacy and IT skills achieved, as well as opportunities to perform tasks often completed by IT professionals.

This study aims to examine how change in white college students’ beliefs about race over the course of a semester impacted their interactions with diverse others. While there is an increasing interest in understanding people's beliefs about race, there has been limited research examining how people’s beliefs about race can and do change over time and how education can facilitate this change.

White students (N = 98) at a predominantly white college completed a multidimensional racial essentialism measure and measures of both self-report and behavioral interactions with diversity, at the beginning and end of a semester. Multilevel modeling with time-varying predictors was used to examine how change in beliefs about race related to change in diversity interactions.

The impact of racial essentialism on student diversity interaction varied considerably depending on the type of racial essentialism. Higher levels of speciation and genotypic essentialism at Time 1 were related to lower interaction with diversity at Time 2. Decreases in phenotypic essentialism were concurrent with increases in diversity interaction over the duration of the semester. For a subgroup of students enrolled in a race and diversity course, unexpectedly, decreases in genotypic essentialism were concurrent with decreases in diversity interaction.

By using a multidimensional model of beliefs about race with a longitudinal assessment, this study contributes to our understanding of how specific components of beliefs about race change over time and how change in these beliefs occurs concurrently with students’ diverse interactions. The findings are discussed in relation to the impact of education on students’ peer interactions with diverse others, with specific implications for race and diversity pedagogy.

Adolescents are at a stage in their life course in which they increasingly become choosers, buyers and preparers of food. Hence, they develop and employ required competences. Current food-related competences of adolescents are shaped in an environment with an abundance of convenience foods. Simultaneously food education has been limited in many western countries. The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize how young practitioners engage with the notion of convenience in a context with a strong presence of convenience foods.

Empirical data for this paper have been collected in a Dutch high school context following a participatory approach in focus group discussions. Data have been gathered from different food-related exercises within a classroom context.

The findings indicate that adolescents’ food competences and meanings are heavily shaped by the abundant presence of convenience foods. Adolescents perceive a nuanced picture of a skilful consumer that incorporates convenience foods in ways that minimize time efforts, preserves some preparatory tasks for fun cooking and has knowledge about health effects of fatty and salty foods.

The investigation takes a novel look on convenience food consumption from a practice perspective scrutinizing competences through the lens of adolescent practitioners. The authors make a plea for tapping into the potential of research on children and adolescents as novice performers of practices to understand how practices are shaped and changed and how practices recruit new practitioners.