The practical work component offers unique challenges for university science courses. This is even more pertinent in an Open and Distance Learning (ODL) environment like the Bindura University of Science Education's Virtual and Open Distance Learning (VODL) programme. Effective ODL education should be flexible enough to accommodate science…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of middle school students' perceptions of the ideal science student to their problem solving activity and conceptual understanding in the applied science area of robotics. Twenty-six 11 and 12 year-olds (22 boys) attending a summer camp for academically advanced students participated in the…

Professionally developed and freely accessible through the Internet, scientific data maps have great potential for teaching and learning with data in the science classroom. Solving problems or developing ideas while using data maps of Earth phenomena in the science classroom may help students to understand the nature and process of science. Little…

This paper describes a forensic science simulation programme applicable for use in colleges. Students were asked to find a putative suspect by DNA fingerprinting using a simple protocol developed in this study. DNA samples were obtained from a hair root and a drop of blood, common sources of DNA in forensic science. The DNA fingerprinting protocol…

Problem solving is an essential skill for undergraduate chemists to acquire. Many problem solving activities encountered on undergraduate programmes are algorithmic, and require lower order cognitive skills to be applied in order to reach a solution. We have developed a number of open-ended problems that use a real life context and require the…

Energy is a critical concept in physics problem-solving but is often a major source of confusion for students if the presentation is not carefully crafted by the instructor or the textbook. The first article in this series discussed student confusion generated by traditional treatments of work. In any discussion of work, it is important to state…

It's a situation every avid cyclist knows only too well. If you cycle up a hill and then back down with no net change in elevation, it seems as if your slower uphill speed and faster downhill speed should offset each other. But they don't. Your average speed is less than it would have been had you cycled the same distance on a level road.…

A number of well-known hydrostatics problems dealing with Archimedes' principle concern a loaded boat floating in a pool. Examples of this sort of problem include: 1. (a) If a stone is thrown overboard from a boat floating in a pool, does the water level in the pool rise, fall, or remain unchanged? (b) If a hole is made in the bottom of the boat…

The effectiveness of problem solving as a learning tool is often diminished because students typically use only an algorithmic approach to get to the answer. We discuss a way of encouraging students to reflect on the solution to their problem by requiring them--after they have arrived at their solution--to draw solution maps. A solution map…

Improving students' problem-solving skills is a major goal for most science educators. While a large body of research on problem solving exists, assessment of meaningful problem solving is very difficult, particularly for courses with large numbers of students in which one-on-one interactions are not feasible. We have used a suite of software…

A historical discussion of the theories which deal with the formation of real images in mirrors and lenses is presented in this paper. Speculations on mirrors appeared as early as Plato. Euclid's, Hero's and Ptolemy's approaches to visual rays are described. The theory on burning mirrors starts with Diocles and later was continued by the Arabs. Al…

The Laplace equation has applications in several fields of physics, and problems involving this equation serve as paradigms for boundary value problems. In the case of the Laplace equation in a disc there is a well-known explicit formula for the solution: Poisson's integral. We show how one can derive this formula, and in addition two equivalent…

This study investigated the connection between the use of video cases within a multimedia learning environment and students' inquiry into a socio-scientific problem. The software program was designed based on principles from the Cognitive Flexibility Theory (CFT) and incorporated video cases of experts with differing perspectives. Seventy-nine…

The authors investigate how an integrative approach can be applied to teaching of different disciplines at school. Interdisciplinarity can be defined as a process of answering a question, solving a problem or addressing a topic that is too broad to be dealt with by a single discipline. In addition to an integrated understanding of the topic, the…

In this article, we provide a discussion on our revision method (termed "prescriptive tutoring") aimed at revealing students' misconceptions and misunderstandings by getting them to solve physics problems with an anonymous partner via the computer. It is currently being implemented and evaluated in a public secondary school in Singapore,…