We use the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long (STPFaSL-Long), a research-based survey instrument with 78 items at the level of introductory physics, to investigate introductory and advanced students' difficulties with entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. We present an analysis of data from 12 different…

This research investigated pre-service teachers' (PSTs) experiences with productive struggle in an online environment, and how it influenced their pedagogical knowledge. This action research study reports on secondary mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) who completed mathematical tasks in weekly synchronous Zoom sessions to develop their…

Secondary mathematics pre-service teachers (PSTs) are required to take university-level mathematics content courses to develop their mathematical content knowledge. Although PSTs' experiences as students play a major role in the types of teachers they become, there is limited research investigating the experiences of PSTs engaging in these…

In three studies, college student participants read a description of ambiguous (i.e., neither explicitly positive nor explicitly negative) academic feedback from a faculty member. Evaluations of the ambiguous feedback were compared across participants' gender identities and levels of social and intellectual belonging in their academic majors and…

General Chemistry I is known as a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) gatekeeper, often playing a role in determining students' STEM college pathways and their career prospects. However, there have been recent efforts to transform General Chemistry I from a gatekeeper course into a gateway course by implementing equity approaches.…

Drawing is a teaching tool that provides numerous benefits to student learning, including enhanced knowledge retention, improved observation skills, and increased engagement with course content. However, these exercises also place high cognitive demands on students and require a considerable time commitment. To acknowledge and celebrate the effort…

In a higher education context, students are expected to take charge of their learning by deciding "what" to learn and "how" to learn. While the learning analytics (LA) community has seen increasing research on the "how" to learn part (i.e., researching methods for supporting students in their learning journey), the…

Student response systems (SRSs) increase the engagement of students by supporting them to participate in the course and thus contribute to their academic achievement. However, in most of the experimental studies in which the effects of SRSs were investigated, details on how to integrate SRSs into the course were not provided. This study aimed to…

The present study explored the antecedents and potential solutions to boredom in online English classrooms from the perspectives of 105 Thai EFL university students. Guided by a qualitative approach, an open-ended survey and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. The thematic analysis of the data revealed nine antecedents that…

While calculus remains the gold standard of academic rigor in most college admissions offices, educators and employers increasingly champion advanced statistics as critical for navigating today's data-driven workforce. So which math pathway actually shapes long-term success? To find out, we asked UT Austin Associate Professor Matt Giani, graduate…

The aim of this study was to examine how pre-service teachers performed in tasks related to three specific aspects of curricular noticing. The participants completed a two-part written task in which they solved three pattern generalization problems and sequenced them for teaching purposes. Inductive content analysis was used to analyze the…

The assumption that honors programs are more academically challenging is rarely interrogated. Using multi-institutional, longitudinal quantitative data from a larger study, we use quasi-experimental methods to examine students' experiences of course rigor, including workload and cognitive challenge, for honors participants compared to…

The empirical evidence concerning the question whether an instructor should be presented on online lecture slides is equivocal and two lines of theoretical reasoning exist. On the one hand, the instructor may distract from the content, thereby hampering learning; on the other hand, the instructor may function as a social cue that triggers a more…

This study looked at the effectiveness of differentiated learning in enhancing students' mathematical outcomes by incorporating varied content, processes, and products. Employing a mixed-methods experimental design, the research hypothesized that differentiated instruction significantly influences students' performance in mathematics exams. The…

This qualitative study aims to investigate novice undergraduate mathematics students' first encounter with the First Isomorphism Theorem, which is, more often than not, the pinnacle of a typical introductory course in Group Theory. Several studies have reported on the challenges that this mathematical result poses to inexperienced mathematicians,…