Students were tasked with the creation of videos of ordinary reactions to promote significant learning of complex concepts underlying chemical transformations. Interactive infographics were used to deliver instructions. Afterward, students planned the experimental setup for the reaction execution and video recording using their mobile phones. The…

Many research results show that students often highlight "mixed-type" reasoning when tackling problematic situations and problems. This reasoning is based on the simultaneous use of common-sense and mere descriptions of facts, perceived as sufficient to build an "explanation" of observed or proposed situations and problems.…

Being able to contextualise and solve complex problems is a highly valued skill in STEM graduates--a skill which we strive to nurture in our students. Since its introduction into undergraduate teaching, laboratory teaching has been used to consolidate students conceptual understanding, develop their practical skills and inculcate an evidence based…

This study describes a new module design for teaching research skills to analytical chemists based on the use of a student-led, in-class experiment involving coffee. The module was redesigned in response to feedback from students, and aims to give them the skills they need to be productive in future research projects both within the institution…

Experimental work in the research of astronomical phenomena is often difficult or even impossible because of long-lasting processes or too distant objects and correspondingly too expensive equipment. In this paper, we present an example of observation of the Moon, which is our nearest astronomic object and therefore does not require professional…

In science classes, students usually learn about the law of definite proportions by the oxidation of copper. However, common procedures usually do not lead to proper results. This leads to confusion among the students because their experimental results do not fit to the theoretical values. Therefore, we invented a new procedure for this experiment…

It is commonly agreed that experiments play a central role in teaching and learning physics. Recently, Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) has been introduced into science teaching in many countries, thus giving another boost for experiments. From a didactical point of view, experiments can serve a number of different goals in teaching and learning…

It was planned to introduce online pre-laboratory session activities to a first-year undergraduate physics laboratory course to encourage a minimum level of student preparation for experiments outside the laboratory environment. A group of 16 and 17 year old laboratory work-experience students were tasked to define and design a pre-laboratory…

Qualitative research conducted with 237 pupils from Canada, France, and Morocco, between 10 and 12 years of age, on the setting and functioning of simple electric circuits, demonstrates that similar explanatory systems of the students. For this, we had given them a paper and pencil questionnaire of a sixty minutes duration. The first question was…

Improving the interest of high-school students towards chemistry (and science in general) is one of the goals of the Italian Ministry of Education. To this aim, we designed a context-based activity that actively involved students in six different laboratory experiences interconnected by a case study of the murder of Miss Scarlet, from the famous…

In this paper we describe an experiment in a linear algebra course. The aim of the experiment was to promote the students' understanding of the studied concepts focusing on their definitions. It seems to be a given that students should understand concepts' definitions before working substantially with them. Unfortunately, in many cases they do…

There has been an increasing movement towards the introduction of inquiry based learning in undergraduate physiology laboratories. Students can however find this challenging when there is a sudden transition from traditional didactic practicals to full inquiry based activities. One reason for this could be the students' perceptions about the…

The main aim of our research was to determine whether the teacher is one of the factors influencing students' perception of biology as a school subject. The study also aimed to identify the influence of certain other factors in this regard, specifically: students' gender and place of residence, the number of biology teachers who have taught the…

Remote robotics laboratories have been successfully used for engineering education. However, few of them use mobile robots to to teach computer science. This article describes a mobile robot Control and Programming Environment (CPE) and its pedagogical applications. The system comprises a remote laboratory for robotics, an online programming tool,…

The urgency of the given problem is caused by the necessity to develop an innovative education system capable of producing highly qualified specialists with a wide range of social and professional activities and broad-based abilities ready for individual operating innovative activities. The article is intended to searching for the ways of…