Studies on the effectiveness of clickers in undergraduate chemistry courses are mixed, and there is disagreement on how to effectively leverage clickers to improve student learning performance. To fill a gap in the research, we analyzed three different teaching strategies (two involving clickers) in a General Chemistry I course over a 13-year time…

General chemistry are key gateway courses for many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors. To improve student outcomes, it is critical both to identify at-risk students and implement evidence-based instructional strategies and interventions. These remain active areas of investigation, with recent literature showing that…

Benefits of metacognition and active learning on student performance are well understood; however, little is known about the effect of the "explicit teaching of metacognition" combined with active learning on student performance in chemistry courses. Using a quasi-experimental study design, we investigated: (1) differences in performance…

Students entering health sciences programs may face challenges on their road to successful completion and possible entry to medical school in the area of preparedness in quantitative skills. At our institution, faculty analyzed evidence of these challenges including performance on the ACT Math Test, an in-house math placement test and quantitative…

Achievement in science is a national concern, and graduating students who are college and career ready is a national imperative. In this study, we examine student achievement on the ACT science test as a high school transitioned from teaching biology, chemistry and physics with a teacher-centric pedagogy (the traditional instructional context) to…