To improve climate education in an introductory weather and climate course, an active-learning lab was developed around a climate decision support system. The Climate Analysis and Visualization for the Assessment of Species Status (CAnVAS) tool allows individuals to view various climate variables and select a particular location and species to…

Acid-base physiology is widely recognized as one of the most conceptually challenging topics in undergraduate education due to its interdisciplinary nature and the necessity for both mechanistic and integrative understanding. This article presents a structured, system-based teaching framework designed to enhance student comprehension of acid-base…

Phylogenetic tree diagrams are commonly found in introductory biology curricula and represent the evolutionary relationships of organisms. Tree-thinking, or the ability to accurately interpret, use, and generate these phylogenetic representations, involves a challenging set of skills for students to learn. Although many introductory biology…

Background: Engineering education traditionally emphasizes technical skills, sometimes at the cost of under-preparing graduates for the real-world engineering context. In recent decades, attempts to address this issue include increasing project-based assignments and engineering design courses in curricula; however, a skills gap between education…

The primary aims of environmental education and courses at universities are for students to develop an environmental mentality and to be able to apply that mindset to solving real-world issues. In this study, pre-service elementary students participated in active learning environments through creating educational radio program activities by…

Teaching quantitative subjects such as operations management (OM) can be quite challenging. In this article, we present a novel approach that uses simplified concept maps for teaching OM. This application of concept maps was investigated to determine if it helps students to answer questions and to solve OM problems more effectively. Our study used…

The active learning literature has greatly expanded over the past few years. This article investigates the utility of employing concept map activities in a medium-sized class, and whether or not it improves students' learning and retention of material. We find that concept mapping activities significantly enhance students' mastery and recollection…

With the increasing availability of web mapping application programming interfaces, those tasked with the job of developing and designing web-based geographic information systems (Web GIS) are faced with the question of how to (re)develop new and existing capabilities. While Web GIS often reproduces features currently available within desktop GIS,…

Background: In scientific inquiry learning, students often have difficulties conducting hypothetical reasoning with multiple intertwined variables. Concept maps have a potential to facilitate complex thinking and reasoning. However, there is little investigation into the content of student-constructed concept maps and its association with inquiry…

A tool is presented that can automatically assess the quality of students' concept maps and provide feedback based on a reference concept map. It is shown that this tool can effectively assess the quality of concept maps, and that it can provide accurate and helpful feedback on a number of specific shortcomings often evident in students' concept…

Gender equality and women's empowerment are important issues that still need to be addressed, despite some progress in recent years. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aim to tackle various global challenges, including the 4th (Quality Education) and 5th (Gender…

Reviews of literature often summarize research within a given field to provide succinct information about state of the art as well as gaps for future research to address. In educational research, such information includes different positions within a field; for example, theoretical positions underpinning empirical studies. Such theoretical…

Giving and receiving peer feedback is seen as an important vehicle for deep learning. Defining assessment criteria is a first step in giving feedback to peers and can play an important role in feedback providers' learning. However, there is no consensus about whether it is better to ask students to think about assessment criteria themselves or to…

Teachers are increasingly expected to incorporate Project-based learning (PBL) pedagogy to teach science. While teachers' definitions and challenges in the use of PBL are widely studied, very few studies focus on the development of a teacher's knowledge of the use of PBL over multiple projects. The current research is an in-depth case study aimed…

The need to encourage critical thinking and academically engage nursing students in a clinical environment compels faculty use of assorted teaching strategies, including concept mapping and flipped learning. Though nurse educators encourage both strategies, concurrent use of both methods in clinical teaching is rare. Thus, this study examined the…