Prompting learners to generate examples has been proposed as an effective way of developing understanding of a new concept. However, empirical support for this approach is lacking. This article presents two empirical studies on the use of example-generation tasks in an online course in introductory university mathematics. The first study compares…

Over the course of the introductory calculus-based physics course, students are often expected to build conceptual understanding and develop and refine skills in problem solving and qualitative inferential reasoning. Many of the research-based materials developed over the past 30 years by the physics education research community use sequences of…

Group diversity is an active topic in research as studies examine how differences in background, culture, job position, gender, and ethnicity can all impact group creativity. One relatively overlooked component is how diversity in academic knowledge affects group and individual creativity. In this study, 56 graduate students from a research…

This study sought to explore whether access to definitions and general representations influences the construction of general direct arguments. Data was collected in college mathematics courses for prospective elementary school teachers. Participant arguments were analyzed along two variables: the generality of the representations and the…

The idea of "threshold concepts" has been used to identify discipline-based concepts that are critical to that academic area. Threshold concepts are often difficult for students to assimilate in a meaningful way but, once done, can be powerful for the learner. In general, threshold concepts are 1) transformative to learner thinking; 2)…

In this exercise, participants create a fictional business based on a set of randomly generated words. This challenge requires participants to exercise creativity, while reinforcing the business concepts learned in class. The exercise has four steps: (1) generating a prompt of three random words, (2) designing a fictional business based on this…

Reaction mechanisms are a core component of organic chemistry. Being able to handle these mechanisms is a central skill for students in this discipline. Diagnosing and fostering mechanistic reasoning is hence an important branch of chemistry education research. When it comes to reasoning about mechanisms, students often experience difficulties…

Sequence stratigraphic and Wheeler diagram interpretations require a strong combination of conceptual understanding and diagram reasoning skills. Students are generally exposed to the foundational concepts within sequence stratigraphy (relative sea level, eustasy, base level, and accommodation) in a variety of courses along their degree path,…

We present here the lessons learned by iteratively designing a tutorial for first-year university students using computer programming to work with mathematical models. Alternating between design and implementation, we used video-taped task interviews and classroom observations to ensure that the design promoted student understanding. The final…

An underexplored aspect of the relationship between analogical reasoning and creativity is its phenomenology; in particular, the notion that analogical reasoning is related to insight and its associated "aha!" experience. However, the relationship between these phenomena has never been directly investigated. We adapted a set of verbal…

In this paper, we seek to evaluate the extent to which students can follow a deductive reasoning chain when it is presented to them. A great deal of instruction in introductory physics courses is centered on presenting students with a logical argument that starts from first principles and systematically leads to a particular conclusion. This…

Using simulation approaches when conducting randomization tests for comparing two groups in the context of experimental studies has been promoted as a beneficial approach for supporting student learning of statistical inference. Many researchers have suggested that the data production process in simulations for the randomization test intuitively…

This study explores university students' understanding of the relationships between formal definitions of the limit of a function and the limit of a sequence in terms of the accumulation point in a technology-enhanced collaborative learning environment. The participants of this study are 17 prospective mathematics teachers. The data are collected…

Reaction mechanisms commonly used in organic chemistry are a great challenge for students in terms of understanding the representation and inferring the appropriate chemical concepts. In order to support the process of identifying and selecting chemical concepts, purposefully designed case comparisons are widely used. While these tasks place great…

Where do novel ideas come from? What mental processes facilitate them? The disinhibition hypothesis suggests creative cognition can be assisted by reducing cognitive inhibition of ideas, facilitating looser associative thoughts to bond with one another to produce novel concepts. Past exploration of the disinhibition hypothesis has been drawn from…