The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) has been used to assess student understanding of introductory concepts of electricity and magnetism because many of the items on the CSEM have strong distractor choices which correspond to students' alternate conceptions. Instruction is unlikely to be effective if instructors do not know…

This study aims to develop a semiotic declarative knowledge model, which is a positive constructive behavior model that systematically facilitates understanding in order to ensure that learners think accurately and ask the right questions about a topic. The data used to develop the experimental model were obtained using four measurement tools…

Formative assessment strategies are used to direct instruction by establishing where learners' understanding is, how it is developing, informing teachers and students alike as to how they might get to their next set of goals of conceptual understanding. For the science classroom, one rich source of formative assessment data about scientific…

Educators must address several challenges inherent to the instruction of scientific disciplines such as physics -- expensive or insufficient laboratory equipment, equipment error, difficulty in simulating certain experimental conditions. Augmented reality (AR) can be a promising approach to address these challenges. In this paper, we discuss the…

The effectiveness of five different enzymes as treatments against Staphylococcus biofilm growth was measured in the presence of antibiotics and alone. Protease was the least effective enzyme in biofilm removal with all antibiotics, and pectinase was the most effective with dicloxacillin and clindamycin. Also, dicloxacillin was the most effective…

The impact of computer simulations on the performance of 65 grade 11 learners in electromagnetism in a South African high school in the Mpumalanga province is investigated. Learners did not use the simulations individually, but teachers used them as an interactive demonstration tool. Basic concepts in electromagnetism are difficult to understand…

The present study examined the cognitive factors that influence children's physical science learning from a multimedia instruction. Using a causally coherent text and visual models, we taught 4th- and 7th-grade children about the observable and molecular properties of the three states of water. We manipulated whether the text was read by a tutor…