How can you switch from a hands-on face-to-face chemistry course to an online course in the face of a pandemic? It is possible to have students do hands-on experiments at home. There are many readily available kitchen, drug store, and garden chemicals that can be used to illustrate the same principles in standard chemistry curricula at multiple…

Many STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines require a two-semester sequence of introductory college chemistry, which are thus critical gateway courses to a variety of majors. Recognizing the benefit to educators of a structure of content learning across the chemistry curriculum, in 2012, the American Chemical Society…

This book provides an archival forum for researchers, academics, practitioners and industry professionals interested and/or engaged in reforming teaching and learning methods by transforming today's learning environments into smart learning environments. It will facilitate opportunities for discussions and constructive dialogue between various…

Students can be seen throughout any campus in America carrying their cell phones, laptop computers, and iPhones. I've seen a tremendous increase in the student use of laptop computers during lectures and students often ask for electronic copies of lectures rather than printed versions. In an attempt to adapt to my students' increasingly…

The middle grades are an exciting time for adolescents to explore, learn, and collaborate with one another (National Middle School Association, 2010). By incorporating an academic social network as part of the classroom experience, collaboration and active learning take on new forms, and a transformation from passive learning to active learning…

This article examines the pedagogical practices of two science inquiry teachers and their students using a Web-based system called Web of Inquiry (WOI). There is a need to build a collective repertoire of pedagogical practices that can assist elementary and middle school teachers as they support students to develop a complex model of inquiry based…

Learning about endangered or threatened species can be an extension of an adaptation or biodiversity lesson. It can also be tied into conversation and what students (and the rest of us) can do to help species in need. Before your students head outdoors, they should be aware of the habitats and species around them. Use the Internet resources…

Particle physics is a subject that can send shivers down the spines of students and educators alike--with visions of long mathematical equations and inscrutable ideas. This perception, along with a full curriculum, often leaves this topic the road less traveled until the latter years of school. Particle physics, including quarks, is typically not…

We have developed an easy-to-use online tutorial generator designed to allow instructors to make tutorials quickly and with a minimal learning curve. The motivation was to create a generator that would allow instructors to create tutorials as needed and possibly build up a bank of tutorials over a number of years. A key design feature of the…

Physics teachers have long employed video clips to study moving objects in their classrooms and instructional labs. A number of approaches exist, both free and commercial, for tracking the coordinates of a point using video. The main characteristics of the method described in this paper are: it is simple to use; coordinates can be tracked using…

"Teaching Lab Science Courses Online" is a practical resource for educators developing and teaching fully online lab science courses. First, it provides guidance for using learning management systems and other web 2.0 technologies such as video presentations, discussion boards, Google apps, Skype, video/web conferencing, and social media…

The last decade has seen a great variety in the ways in which instructors have incorporated the World Wide Web into their traditional classroom courses; however, this combination has not always translated into changes or improvements in teaching and learning. The real challenge has proved to be not the addition of web resources to the traditional…

Students struggle with the transition from learning to read narrative text in the early grades to reading expository text in the science classroom in the upper grades as they begin reading and writing to gain information. Science teachers can adapt their teaching materials to develop students' reading comprehension and recall by writing summaries…

When a college instructor goes out of town and must miss a lecture, the standard options are to cancel the class meeting or to enlist a colleague to fill in. In the former case a teaching opportunity is lost; in the latter the substitute may not lead the class in the same way as the instructor. Some students routinely skip lectures by a guest…

One of the difficulties in teaching basic molecular biology concepts to the students with little biological background is the lack of hands-on exercises that combines the challenges of the concepts with visualization and immediate feedback. BIOPS Interactive is a web-based interactive learning environment for molecular biology that complements…