The under-representation of women in undergraduate science courses is well-documented. One significant challenge is that women may both perceive and receive less recognition from their science peers about their abilities as scientists than men. Here we investigate the presence and nature of such gender biases in peer recognition in the discipline…

Opportunities for large numbers of undergraduates to engage in authentic research experiences are limited in many large public institutions. These large public institutions serve the vast majority of students who are historically underrepresented in STEM fields, such as first-generation, low-income students of color. Although a course-based…

Being lectured by a woman physicist can benefit students' performance, motivation, and engagement with physics. However, due to the severe underrepresentation of women physics faculty, these instances may be scarce. Through semistructured interviews with seven women physics lecturers, we used expectancy-value theory to understand the situative…

Lectures prevail as a ubiquitous teaching and learning method across universities worldwide. Whereas lectures have been conceptualized from language-centred perspectives, lectures' materiality as linked to their socio-cultural and historical meanings have been scarcely explored. To address this gap, we tackle the materiality of communication in…

Researchers have pinpointed recognition from others as one of the most important dimensions of students' science and engineering identity. Studies, however, have found gender biases in students' recognition of their peers, with inconsistent patterns across introductory science and engineering courses. Toward finding the source of this variation,…

The concept of active learning as a superior mode of instruction has recently received great attention in the education research literature. It holds promise of steering students away from rote memorization towards higher order thinking (as defined by Bloom's taxonomy revised). However, few studies focus on student perceptions of higher order…

People with disabilities are chronically underrepresented in many geoscience departments across the country. There are a number of proposed reasons why this under-representation persists, one of which is lack of instructor training in designing accessible curriculum and making high-quality accommodations. This not only puts students with…

Peer-facilitated workshops enhanced interactivity in our introductory biology course, which led to increased student engagement and learning. A majority of students preferred attending two lectures and a workshop each week over attending three weekly lectures. In the workshops, students worked in small cooperative groups as they solved challenging…