This article will (1) initially outline first-year nursing and undergraduate exercise sciences student perspectives on examinations of the 2011 Michael-McFarland (M-M2011) core principles in physiology through an anonymous online survey, and (2) model an updated approach based on these qualitative findings. Briefly, for the first perspective (i of…

Breadth and depth of curriculum are important for success in science teaching and learning. Curriculum theorists recommend less breadth and more depth than overloaded, superficial science curricula. This study investigates breadth and depth in the official biology syllabi in the seventh to eighth or ninth years in four diverse jurisdictions,…

Background: Research on chemistry education has found that students have commonly some difficulties in understanding chemical changes. These difficulties in the learning process have negatively affected students' success. For this reason, it is very important to overcome students' learning difficulties with new materials that prevent the…

In the United States, there is a demand for registered nurses. To be admitted into the nursing program, students need to complete prerequisite courses such as human anatomy and physiology. Many students find human anatomy and physiology challenging due to the nature of the content. Poor performance in human anatomy and physiology can preclude a…

Emory University has had a long relationship with His Holiness the Dalai Lama through the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. Recently the Tenzin Gyatso Science Scholars, who are Tibetan Buddhist monastics that reside and take courses on Emory's campus, were enrolled in a novel science research course designed and taught by undergraduate students at…

We developed labs on the evolution of antibiotic resistance to assess the costs and benefits of replacing traditional laboratory exercises in an introductory biology course for majors with a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE). To assess whether participating in the CURE imposed a cost in terms of exam performance, we implemented…

Two-stage exams, in which students first complete an exam individually and then again as a group, have been used successfully in many disciplines to promote collaboration, learning, and retention of learning. However, it is unknown what the impacts of two-stage exams would be with chemical engineering students. In this study, two-stage exams were…

We designed a rubric to assess free-response exam problems in order to compare thinking skills evidenced in exams in classes taught by different pedagogies. The rubric was designed based on Bloom's taxonomy and then used to code exam problems. We have analyzed historical and recent exam problems in both algebra-based and calculus-based exams. In…

There has been growing evidence that flipped teaching (FT) can increase student engagement. Traditional lecture-based teaching (TT) method was compared with FT and FT combined with retrieval practice (FTR) in a 400-level Exercise Physiology course over eight semesters. In the FT format, lecture content was assigned for students to prepare before…

A sense of belonging is an important factor for the persistence of girls in the study of physics. Content and imagery that presents the field as a masculine domain will undermine belonging and make it more difficult for girls to establish a physics identity that is congruent with their gender identity. The physics syllabus, final examinations and…

Gross anatomy dissection in contemporary medical education must balance the traditional value of learning from the cadaver with the possibilities created by the use of digital tools as supplemental resources that personalize and deepen the student learning experience. This study broadly examined the design, implementation, and use of…

While other fields such as statistics and education have examined various issues with quantitative work, few studies in physics education research (PER) have done so. We conducted a two-phase study to identify and to understand the extent of these issues in quantitative PER. During phase 1, we conducted a focus group of three experts in this area,…

This project produced an online astronomy course based on the free, online OpenStax textbook. When this project was conceived, about a year before the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors had no idea that in a short period of time, most college and university classes would be online. This abrupt change in modalities of courses, from traditional,…

This account reports building a community of practice for organic chemistry instructors. With support from Chemistry Collaborations, Workshops, and Communities of Scholars (cCWCS), a group of organic chemistry faculty facilitated multiple workshops to introduce active learning techniques to their colleagues across the country. A Web site,…

In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) are confronted with the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (acronym MIUR) has remarked its importance in the syllabus to address the high school exit…