The primary purpose of this study was to compare academic variables from students participating in mixed teaching methods/course revitalization biology courses to those in traditional courses at two community colleges in Tennessee. A two-group comparison design using archived data was used, which evaluated differences in final grades, exam scores,…

Active learning has been shown to improve student learning and engagement in many 4-year institutions; however, large-scale studies on the efficacy of active learning in community colleges are lacking. In this study, we investigate the effects of active learning in a first semester majors' general biology course at a large, suburban community…

Concept inventory (CI) tests are typically used to measure students' general knowledge before and after instruction. We find issue with the current format of these tests, which some researchers claim, measure students' misconceptions, since the answers choices given to students do not consider their prior knowledge. We particularly analyze Force…

Despite the centrality of evolution to the study of biology, the pedagogical methods employed to teach the subject are often instructor-centered and rarely embedded in every topic throughout the curriculum. In addition, students' prior beliefs about evolution are often dismissed rather than incorporated into the classroom. In this article we…

Gene expression is a highly theoretical concept that requires advanced reasoning skills to comprehend. Often, students receive instruction but fail to replace prior conceptions and thus do not benefit. In order to investigate the reason for this failure, we used a directed inquiry activity that uses concrete analogies in both majors and non-majors…

It is an established fact that in the United States there is a great need to improve the scientific literacy of undergraduate students, especially those who are nonscience majors. Data presented herein suggest that using simple art concepts can assist nonscience majors in better appreciating scientific facts related to chemistry. However, it is…

Two experiments were conducted with developmental education students to investigate the impact of a contextualized intervention focusing on written summarization and other reading and writing skills. In experiment 1 (n = 322), greater gain was found for intervention than comparison participants on three summarization measures: proportion of main…