This activity ties together the recycling of aluminum and the protection of rain forests. Students use critical thinking to study the effects of open pit mining of bauxite in rain forests and then draw their own conclusions about how to minimize the impact of bauxite mining and boost recycling efforts within their communities. Drawing conclusions…

Self-explaining is a domain-independent learning strategy that generally leads to a robust understanding of the domain material. However, there are two potential explanations for its effectiveness. First, self-explanation generates additional "content" that does not exist in the instructional materials. Second, when compared to…

The current generation of students coming into food science and engineering programs is very visually oriented from their early experiences. To increase their interest in learning, new and visually appealing teaching materials need to be developed. Two diverse groups of students may be identified based on their math skills. Food science students…

A simple experiment can be performed to characterize the relationship between applied voltage and velocity (steady state and transient) for an electric toy train. The results can be used by teams of students to solve a series of challenges in which they attempt to predict the performance of a particular train. Some sample challenges might include…

An attention-grabbing center-of-mass demonstration uses the map of a state mounted on a sheet of heavy cardboard and cut out along the boundaries. The two-dimensional object is hung from a hole punched into a city near the edge, and a string with a pendulum bob attached to it passes through the center of mass. The process is repeated with a…

Sometimes it becomes a matter of natural choice for an observer (A) that he prefers a coordinate system of two-dimensional spatial x-y coordinates from which he observes another observer (B) who is moving at a uniform speed along a line of motion, which is not collinear with A's chosen x- or y-axis. It becomes necessary in such cases to develop…

The International Polar Year-Research and Educational Opportunities in Antarctica for Minorities (IPY-ROAM) program was designed to increase minority participation in polar science by immersing participants in an academic program that included a trip to Antarctica. The IPY-ROAM program was focused on increasing public understanding of the polar…

Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is a specific form of small group learning recognized by Project Kaleidoscope as best practice pedagogy (Varma-Nelson, 2004). PLTL was first developed by Woodward, Gosser, and Weiner (1993) as an integrated method that promoted discourse and creative problem solving in chemistry at the City College of New York. It is…

Bodily manipulations, such as juggling, suggest a well-synchronized physical interaction as if the person were a physics expert. The juggler uses "knowledge" that is rooted in bodily experience, to interact with the environment. Such enacted bodily knowledge is powerful, efficient, predictive, and relates to sensory perception of the dynamics of…

The international literature suggests students frequently resort to the use of formulae when solving stoichiometry problems without understanding the concepts. In prior work we identified Thai student alternative conceptions and ability to solve numerical problem for stoichiometry. The results indicate that many Thai students also hold alternative…

Iranian educational methods and our own observations of physics students led us to devise a way of improving our students' ability to solve real-life problems. We designed a guided inquiry-based course "Physics by photography" which we implemented for approximately 250 students. This revealed that this type of course could motivate…

The golden ratio appears in a classical mechanics coupled-oscillator problem that many undergraduates may not solve. Once the symmetry is broken in a more standard problem, the golden ratio appears. Several student exercises arise from the problem considered in this paper.

Preservice preparation courses for elementary teachers of science can provide opportunities to build pedagogical content knowledge. One common concern of preservice teachers is how to cope with a preplanned lesson that does not proceed as planned. Providing opportunities for preservice teachers to experience the unexpected actually immerses them…

In recent years, teachers have noticed a drop in student effort on complex problems in math and science. The purpose of this study was to determine if incorporating cooperative learning and self-recording strategies had an impact upon student effort on complex problems. A total of 38 9th through 11th grade math and science students at two…

Seeking improved student performance in elementary schools has led educators to advocate inquiry-based teaching approaches, including problem-based learning (PBL). In PBL, students simultaneously develop problem-solving strategies, disciplinary knowledge bases, collaborative skills, and dispositions. Research into the efficacy of PBL in elementary…