Most of the items tried to tap the extent to which there were collaborative activities going on where students were working on teams and asking questions of the instructor. The outcomes had to do with things like the development of communication skills, problem-solving skills, doing engineering design, and working in groups. The evidence from 480 students of 25 different courses are dramatic. Those effects persisted even when they controlled for a variety of differences in students' characteristics such as SAT scores, high school grades, parents' formal education and socio-economic status. Learning is promoted when there is faculty modeling of the learning process .
Effective teaching emphasizes linking established concepts to new situations .
An approach that promotes learning is to emphasize interpersonal collaboration. When alumni are asked what kinds of skills they need on the job and how well their institution prepared them, the ability to work in groups is the most frequently cited skill that colleges and universities have failed to help students develop. These skills are being learned on the job instead. Effective teaching emphasizes rich and frequent feedback on performance from faculty and peers . The approaches are part of a curriculum that promotes cross-disciplinary skills publicly held to be important.