At the end of the nineteenth century, biology as an academic discipline was as young as its corresponding school subject. Now nature itself was analysed as a complex (eco)system consisting of animals, plants, and man. The dramatic conceptual shift and subsequent development of school curricula called for teaching aids representing the new…

Purpose: Higher education institutions have a significant impact in preparing future generations for the creation of a sustainable society. By formulating appropriate curricula, the university can shape student personality with sustainability concerns. This study aims to present the results of a teaching approach on environmental sustainability…

The world we live in is increasingly multimodal, necessitating multiliteracy for learners to engage meaningfully with knowledge and skills. While verbal language is the primary medium for constructing, communicating and learning scientific knowledge and concepts, visuals can help learners to gain knowledge that they may not develop from verbal…

The Reaction Coordinate Diagram Inventory (RCDI) has been developed to measure student thinking and confidence with reaction coordinate diagrams (RCDs) and their correspondence to reaction mechanisms. The RCDI was designed using a sequential mixed-methods protocol, such that the questions and distractors in the instrument were generated based on…

This article presents an educational approach that merges ideas of critical pedagogy with those of visual culture. According to this approach -- termed "visual critical pedagogy" -- art is an integral part of the textures of society and culture and their manifold and complex visual expressions, including the more controversial and…

We performed an empirical study of the perceived quality of scientific graphics produced by beginning R users in two plotting systems: the base graphics package ("base R") and the ggplot2 add-on package. In our experiment, students taking a data science course on the Coursera platform were randomized to complete identical plotting…

This study was aimed at revealing pedagogical practices of experienced vocational English language teachers, focusing on their lesson planning as well as teaching and classroom management practices, and to understand why they act the way they do. Data were collected through interviews with 5 selected experienced vocational English language…

Visual communication, especially films, can be an effective way to teach complex topics. The use of films in business schools, however, has been limited even though demand for such content is increasing. This article takes a focused look at how educators can take advantage of films to teach diversity in business. Despite the importance of…

How does STEM knowledge learned in school change students' brains? Using fMRI, we presented photographs of real-world structures to engineering students with classroom-based knowledge and hands-on lab experience, examining how their brain activity differentiated them from their "novice" peers not pursuing engineering degrees. A…

How do academic disciplines use PowerPoint? This project analyzed PowerPoint files created by an academic publisher to supplement textbooks. An automated analysis of 30,263 files revealed clear differences by disciplines. Single-paradigm "hard" disciplines used less complex writing but had more words than multi-paradigm "soft"…

The aim of this study is to examine the social study book in terms of graphic design principles. This research is a qualitative study. Qualitative research is a type of research in which perception, events or circumstances are revealed in a realistic and totalitarian way. In this study, Document Analyses Technique is used as a data collection…

Pictures are often integrated in digital learning materials with the purpose of enhancing learning. This mixed methods study uses quantitative eye-tracking data and qualitative data such as oral answers to discover whether characteristics of pictures influence patterns of text-picture transition in readers with (n = 10) and without (n = 14)…

In Benjamin Franklin's one fluid theory of electrification, ordinary unelectrified matter consisted of a matrix of matter suffused with a certain amount of "electrical fluid." Electrical effects were due to an excess or deficit of electrical fluid, hence the terms positive and negative. Before the development of a modern view of the…

Two experiments involving 125 grade-10 students learning about commerce investigated strategies to overcome the transient information effect caused by explanatory spoken text. The transient information effect occurs when learning is reduced as a result of information disappearing before the learner has time to adequately process it, or link it…

This case study explores the use of the In-the-Picture approach to engage with the views and experiences of very young children and people with whom typical communication approaches are not effective. It describes this qualitative grounded method which enables the researcher to consider the child's perspective, through the use of first-person…