For many years, Techbridge Girls focused its weekly sessions on stand-alone lessons that asked participants to develop products that fulfilled specific criteria, such as "create the bounciest rubber ball," "build the tallest paper tower," or "design the largest bubbles." These activities typically lasted one or two…

Open-ended investigative work is important for science at the high school level because it provides students with experiences approaching the authentic practice of scientists. In England context, some teachers provide opportunities for open-ended investigation, even though at post-16 (pre-university) A-Level they are no longer required to do so.…

Higher education is experiencing a paradigm shift from passive learning towards active learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has further presented an opportunity for education providers to enhance teaching that includes non-campus modes. However, concerns regarding student engagement lie at the heart of the transition to active learning environments in…

This study aimed at investigating the effects of KWL strategy in fourth grade students' achievement in science and their attitudes towards using it. It compares the results of different ways of teaching science topics, and students' attitudes towards their use. The study was conducted using a quasi-experimental design case study. The participants…

The number of online courses in higher education is on the rise. However, empirical evidence elucidating best practices for synchronous online instruction is needed to best implement these courses. The research purposes were to examine synchronous online class sessions to (1) quantify interaction type, frequency, and rate, (2) quantify student…

Failed experiments are a common occurrence in research, yet many undergraduate science laboratories rely on established protocols to ensure students are able to obtain results. While it is logistically challenging to facilitate students' conducting their own experiments in the laboratory, allowing students to "fail" in a safe environment…

In practical courses, students consider teachers' assessment of various skills to be baseless and unfair. Unfortunately, due to a lack of equipment, only a few students take part in practical skills performance, while the rest of the students remain passive in learning and assessment. In this paper we suggest an original design to use peer…

Watson and McMahon's (2005) work identified a need for research to examine the what and how of children's career development learning; this research is a start to answering that call, specifically focusing on STEM career interest as a precursor to development due to the current needs nationally for an increase in the STEM pipeline. This study…

Peek into a math classroom, virtual or physical. What are students doing and saying about their math learning? Are they engaged? Are they thinking critically -- evaluating solutions, assessing their understanding, revising their strategies, explaining concepts, and connecting mathematics to real life? Helping all students become more self-directed…

Teaching blackbody radiation within the framework of astrophysics can motivate students to learn and obtain a more profound and qualitative understanding of the subject. In this paper we present a teaching module that intertwines teaching blackbody radiation via the continuous spectrum of hot objects, especially the stars. The module's approach…

Despite their increasingly widespread adoption in post-secondary education, scholars and practitioners know very little about the impact of digital data displays on instructors' sense-making and academic planning. In this manuscript, I report the results of comparative case studies of five different introductory physics instructors at three…

This paper discusses the experience of online studio activities for a second year project project-oriented design-based learning (PODBL) unit. The experience of delivering campus-based studio activities through an online platform, to a design a small power system, is shared due to COVID-19 restrictions. The student experience is benchmarked with…

This study measured student engagement in real time through the use of skin biosensors, specifically galvanic skin response (GSR), in a large undergraduate lecture classroom. The study was conducted during an intervention in an introductory-level biology course (N = 420) in which one section of the course was taught with active-learning approaches…

Active learning is frequently used to describe teaching practices, but the term is not well-defined in the context of undergraduate biology education. To clarify this term, we explored how active learning is defined in the biology education literature (n = 148 articles) and community by surveying a national sample of biology education researchers…

Although the existence of and access to clean water are essential for sustaining life on Earth, multiple studies have demonstrated students' nascent understanding of basic water principles. Students have misconceptions related to the water cycle (Ben-zvi-Assarf and Orion 2005), groundwater (Dickerson and Dawkins 2004; Covitt et al. 2009), and the…