With teachers continuing to report challenges in classroom management and difficulties in implementing scientific inquiry, the current manner in which science practical work is conducted in schools suggests the need for added teacher support. In this regard, we can leverage computer vision to provide instructional support by relieving teachers of…

Online homework systems have been shown to help student achievement in chemistry courses. This study sought to compare the levels of knowledge retention in students over the course of a semester, using two different types of homework systems--the adaptive-responsive system and the traditional-responsive system. Two sections of a first semester…

Constructed response (CR) assessments allow students to demonstrate understanding of complex topics and provide teachers with deeper insight into student thinking. Computer scoring models (CSMs) remove the barrier of increased time and effort, making CR more accessible. As CSMs are commonly created using responses from research-intensive colleges…

This study seeks to evaluate the use of social media in education by the science teachers in terms of its impact upon students, parents, and colleagues, relying on the method of special case study, employed in qualitative research. The data includes findings compiled through semi-structured interviews held with the participation of seven science…

In this paper, we demonstrate how machine learning could be used to quickly assess a student's multimodal representational thinking. Multimodal representational thinking is the complex construct that encodes how students form conceptual, perceptual, graphical, or mathematical symbols in their mind. The augmented reality (AR) technology is adopted…

In this paper, we describe an experiment that compared the use of a Tangible User Interface (physical objects augmented with digital information) and a set of Contrasting Cases as a preparation for future learning. We carried out an experiment (N = 40) with a 2 × 2 design: the first factor compared traditional instruction ("Tell &…

Extensive research has shown that one of the benefits of programming to learn about scientific phenomena is that it facilitates learning about mechanisms underlying the phenomenon. However, using programming activities in classrooms is associated with costs such as requiring additional time to learn to program or students needing prior experience…

This study investigated how students' and teachers' pedagogical roles in mobile learning moderated the relationship between high school students' perceived usefulness of mobile technology and the actual use frequency, as well as how students' perceived usefulness impacted their physics learning achievement. We examined 803 high school freshmen who…

Central to evolution is the concept of a common ancestry from which all life has emerged over immense time scales, but learning and teaching temporal aspects of evolution remain challenging. This study investigated students' interpretation of evolutionary time when engaging with a multi-touch tabletop application called DeepTree, a dynamic…

The goal of this study was to investigate the timing of online homework completion and its effects on student performance. Data was collected from two large, first-semester general chemistry sections at a southwestern university. Specifically, this study aims to explore the link between when students complete their homework relative to the date…

Engaging in argumentation from evidence is challenging for most middle school students. We report the design of a media-based mentoring system to support middle school students in engaging in argumentation in the context of a game-infused science curriculum. Our design emphasizes learners apprenticing with college student mentors around the…

Today's children grow up surrounded by computers. They observe them, interact with them and, as a consequence, start forming conceptions of how they work and what they can do. Any constructivist approach to learning requires that we gain an understanding of such preconceived ideas and beliefs in order to use computers as learning tools in an…

The present paper informs about an analysis of students' conceptions about car braking distances and also presents one of the novel methods of learning: an interactive computer program Tracker that we used to analyse the process of braking of a car. The analysis of the students' conceptions about car braking distances consisted in…

Both complex systems methods (such as agent-based modeling) and computational methods (such as programming) provide powerful ways for students to understand new phenomena. To understand how to effectively teach complex systems and computational content to younger students, we conducted a study in four urban middle school classrooms comparing…

Veterinary schools, similar to many professional health programs, face a myriad of evolving challenges in delivering their professional curricula including expansion of class size, costs to maintain expensive laboratories, and increased demands on veterinary educators to use curricular time efficiently and creatively. Additionally, exponential…