General chemistry are key gateway courses for many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors. To improve student outcomes, it is critical both to identify at-risk students and implement evidence-based instructional strategies and interventions. These remain active areas of investigation, with recent literature showing that…

This study proposes methods of reporting results of physics conceptual evaluations that more fully characterize the range of outcomes experienced by students with differing levels of prior preparation, allowing for more meaningful comparison of the outcomes of educational interventions within and across institutions. Factors leading to variation…

Studies on the effectiveness of clickers in undergraduate chemistry courses are mixed, and there is disagreement on how to effectively leverage clickers to improve student learning performance. To fill a gap in the research, we analyzed three different teaching strategies (two involving clickers) in a General Chemistry I course over a 13-year time…

Comprehensive understanding of complex biological systems necessitates the use of computational models because they facilitate visualisation and interrogation of system dynamics and data-driven analysis. Computational model-based (CMB) activities have demonstrated effectiveness in improving students' understanding and their ability to use and…

Benefits of metacognition and active learning on student performance are well understood; however, little is known about the effect of the "explicit teaching of metacognition" combined with active learning on student performance in chemistry courses. Using a quasi-experimental study design, we investigated: (1) differences in performance…

Students entering health sciences programs may face challenges on their road to successful completion and possible entry to medical school in the area of preparedness in quantitative skills. At our institution, faculty analyzed evidence of these challenges including performance on the ACT Math Test, an in-house math placement test and quantitative…

Previous studies have found that students' concept-building approaches, identified a priori with a cognitive psychology laboratory task, are associated with student exam performances in chemistry classes. Abstraction learners (those who extract the principles underlying related examples) performed better than exemplar learners (those who focus on…

Problem Roulette (PR), an online study service at the University of Michigan, offers points-free formative practice to students preparing for examinations in introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses. Using four years of PR data involving millions of problem attempts by thousands of students, we quantify the benefits…

Technology has changed almost every aspect of our daily lives. It is not surprising then that technology has made its way into the classroom. More and more educators are utilizing technological resources in creative ways with the intent to enhance learning, including using virtual laboratories in the sciences in place of the…

Formally launched in September 2018, the ACT® Certified Educator™ program is a professional learning and credentialing program designed to help educators improve their teaching and tutoring strategies and skills and be fully equipped to support student learning in the core content areas of the ACT® test. In this study, participants' views of the…

Analysis of programming process data has become popular in computing education research and educational data mining in the last decade. This type of data is quantitative, often of high temporal resolution, and it can be collected non-intrusively while the student is in a natural setting. Many levels of granularity can be obtained, such as…

Achievement in science is a national concern, and graduating students who are college and career ready is a national imperative. In this study, we examine student achievement on the ACT science test as a high school transitioned from teaching biology, chemistry and physics with a teacher-centric pedagogy (the traditional instructional context) to…

The number of computer science (CS) courses has been dramatically expanding in U.S. high schools (HS). In comparison with well-established courses in mathematics and science, little is known about how the decisions made by HS CS teachers regarding how and what to teach impact student performance later in introductory college CS courses. Drawing on…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of an 11th-grade and 12th-grade zoo-based academic high school experiential science program compared to a same school-district school-based academic high school experiential science program on students' pretest and posttest science, math, and reading achievement, and student perceptions of…

The conflict between the amount of material to be addressed in high school science classes, the need to prepare students for standardized tests, and the amount of time available forces science educators to make difficult pedagogical decisions on a daily basis. Hands-on and inquiry-based learning offer students more authentic learning experiences…