Gateway science courses are an ongoing obstacle to recruitment into STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Students come into courses that have a high cognitive load, which makes success in the course challenging. Instructional design can be used to reduce cognitive load. The findings demonstrate that leveraging pre- and…

Analyzing heterogeneous treatment effects (HTEs) plays a crucial role in understanding the impacts of educational interventions. A standard practice for HTE analysis is to examine interactions between treatment status and preintervention participant characteristics, such as pretest scores, to identify how different groups respond to treatment.…

Nanoscale science remains at the forefront of modern scientific endeavors. As such, students in chemistry need to be prepared to navigate the physical and chemical concepts that describe the unique phenomena observed at this scale. Current approaches to integrating nanoscale topics into undergraduate chemistry curricula range from the design of…

Are South Africans financially literate, and how can this be measured? Until 2009 there was no South African financial literacy measure and, therefore, the aim was to develop a South African measurement instrument that is scientific, socially acceptable, valid and reliable. To achieve this aim a contextual and conceptual analysis of financial…

The potential of computer-based assessments for capturing complex learning outcomes has been discussed; however, relatively little is understood about how to leverage such potential for summative and accountability purposes. The aim of this study is to develop and validate a multimedia-based assessment of scientific inquiry abilities (MASIA) to…

Background: All national curriculum tests in England are pre-tested as part of the development process. Differences in pupil performance between pre-test and live test are consistently found. This difference has been termed the pre-test effect. Understanding the pre-test effect is essential in the test development and selection processes and in…