Digital technology constitutes a substantial presence in higher education and notions like 'digital natives' and '21st century digital skills' dominate educational discourse. However, within the last decade, scholars have started questioning the prevailing techno-optimism and practitioners have started debating whether and how to regulate the use…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many courses to move online, presenting a particular challenge for hands-on laboratory courses. One such course in our Biotechnology track is an advanced Protein Interactions lecture/laboratory course. This 8-week course typically meets for 5 h a week in the laboratory space. For the Fall 2020 version of the course,…

Studies examining students' achievement goals, cognitive engagement strategies and performance have found that achievement goals tend to predict classes of cognitive strategy use which predict performance on measures of learning. These studies have led to deeper theoretical understanding, but their reliance on self-report data limit the…

Previous studies have demonstrated that making annotations can be a meaningful and useful learning method that promote metacognition and enhance learning achievement. A web-based annotation system, Virtual Pen (VPEN), which provides for the creation and review of annotations and homework solutions, has been developed to foster learning process…