Smartphone-based experimental exercises were incorporated as part of the homework problems in an introductory mechanics course at a university. A quasi-experimental field study with two cohorts design was performed to measure the impact of such exercises on motivation, interest and conceptual understanding. The empirical results on learning…

Cognitive activation is one of the central quality characteristics of teaching. Studies which analyzed cognitive activation in science instruction and its influence on the achievement and the interest of students, took most of the times place in higher grades. Since scientific thinking can be taught at a very early stage and, in particular,…

Nowadays, outreach labs are important informal learning environments in science education. After summarizing research to goals outreach labs focus on, we describe our evidence-based gene technology lab as a model of a research-driven outreach program. Evaluation-based optimizations of hands-on teaching based on cognitive load theory (additional…

Our research objective focused on monitoring students' mental effort and cognitive achievement to unveil potential effects of an instructional change in an out-of-school laboratory offering gene technology modules. Altogether, 231 students (12th graders) attended our day-long hands-on module. Within a quasi-experimental design, a treatment group…

Developmental changes in the understanding and use of the logic of experimental control were addressed with three tasks in a longitudinal study. In all three tasks, understanding of experimental control was assessed by production measures (children were asked to test potential causal relations in a multivariable situation) and by choice/evaluation…