Undergraduate students' understanding of function continuity has not been explored broadly in previous research. The relevant findings in the literature are predominantly concerned with calculus students' understanding and misconceptions of continuity. Many of these misunderstandings are tied to the relationships which continuity has with limits…

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…

Literature on student ideas about circuits largely focuses on misunderstandings and difficulties, with seminal papers framing student thinking as stable, difficult to change, and connected to incorrect ontological categorizations of current as a thing rather than a process. In this paper, we analyzed 417 student responses to a conceptual question…

Background: Understanding students' naive conceptions about the norms that guide scientific best practice is important so that teachers can adapt to students' existing understandings. Objective: We examined what incoming undergraduate students of psychology believe about reproducibility and open science practices. Method: We conducted an online…

Electrochemistry, a key topic in introductory chemistry, is a topic that many students struggle with conceptually. Visual learning tools like concept maps allow the externalization of key concepts and the relationships between these concepts may aid in students' acquisition and retention of newly learned electrochemistry concepts. Partnering with…

Peer Instruction gives practice in the abstract language of physics, addresses common misconceptions among students, and is more effective than traditional lecturing. However, it is not clear what makes Peer Instruction effective nor how we might improve the method. An emerging perspective is that what makes Peer Instruction effective is how it…

While many university health science programs include physics courses to raise knowledge and understanding of physical science concepts, they are still far from addressing the needs of that science health profession. This study aimed to investigate the effect of an introductory physics course on first-year physiotherapy and rehabilitation (PR)…

Concurrency is a complex to learn topic that is becoming more and more relevant, such that many undergraduate Computer Science curricula are introducing it in introductory programming courses. This paper investigates the combined use of Sonic Pi and Team-Based Learning to mitigate the difficulties in early exposure to concurrency. Sonic Pi, a…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Technology (STEM) fields face challenges with underrepresented minority (URM) student achievement and retention. White students earned 59% of bachelor's degrees in science and engineering, while LatinX and African American students earned 16% and 9% respectively (National Center for Science and Engineering…

This study presents the development and validation of a novel multiple-choice test designed to assess university students' conceptual understanding of electric field, force, and flux. The test of understanding of electric field, force, and flux was constructed based on the results of previous studies using a phenomenographic approach to classify…

Programming skills are increasingly important to the current digital economy, yet these skills have long been regarded as challenging to acquire. A central challenge in learning programming skills involves the simultaneous use of multiple component skills. This article investigates why students struggle with integrating component skills--a…