This study was aimed at eliminating the difficulties in teaching the concepts and the students' conceptual understanding in the "Force and Energy" unit through semantic mapping. The study was conducted using the action research method. This study was conducted in the control group using the existing learning method in the science…

When thinking about measurement uncertainty in a laboratory experiment that features quantum mechanical effects, it is important to consider both the physical principles of underlying quantum theory (e.g., the uncertainty due to quantum mechanical superposition states) as well as the limitations of the measurement (e.g., the spread in outcomes due…

Physics homework often boils down to solving end-of-chapter quantitative problems. For targeting different learning goals of physics education, different types of homework are needed. The aim of this research was to compare the effectiveness of simulation-based, video-based, and paper-and-pencil homework in developing an understanding about…

Students spend much time in doing their physics homework. Whether this effort results in deep learning depends on the quality of the mere homework. Therefore, we designed a minds-on simulation-based approach to physics homework and conducted a pretest-posttest quasi-experiment to compare its effectiveness to the effectiveness of traditional…

The Physiology Core Concept of flow down gradients is a major concept in physiology, as pressure gradients are the key driving force for the bulk flow of fluids in biology. However, students struggle to understand that this principle is foundational to the mechanisms governing bulk flow across diverse physiological systems (e.g., blood flow,…

Undergraduate students taking the Material and Energy Balance course often comment on (a) having a desire to know more about what kinds of problems chemical engineers working in industry address; and (b) feeling that in-class examples and homework problems do not address real-world problems. This case study, used in the Material and Energy Balance…

This study assessed the impact of an "active learning" strategy employed alone or in combination with traditional lectures on the learning of mammalian physiology by undergraduate students. The study investigated the impact of three teaching strategies, namely (1) traditional lecture, (2) group discussion alone, and (3) combination of…

Smartphone-based experimental exercises were incorporated as part of the homework problems in an introductory mechanics course at a university. A quasi-experimental field study with two cohorts design was performed to measure the impact of such exercises on motivation, interest and conceptual understanding. The empirical results on learning…

Numerous online resources provide a variety of content for a wide range of STEM topics; however, they tend to function as isolated tidbits that provide content-specific knowledge. Application-based science education videos address the overlooked issue of concept to application by implementing experimental components in their videos and fostering…

We compute nodal centrality measures on the collaboration networks of students enrolled in three upper-division physics courses, usually taken sequentially, at the Colorado School of Mines. These are complex networks in which links between students indicate assistance with homework. The courses included in the study are intermediate classical…

Phylogenetic trees have become increasingly important across the life sciences, and as a result, learning to interpret and reason from these diagrams is now an essential component of biology education. Unfortunately, students often struggle to understand phylogenetic trees. Style (i.e., diagonal or bracket) is one factor that has been observed to…

The application of the Reaction Monte Carlo (RxMC) algorithm to standard textbook problems in chemical reaction equilibria is discussed. The RxMC method is a molecular simulation algorithm for studying the equilibrium properties of reactive systems, and therefore provides the opportunity to develop computer-based "experiments" for the…

Many large-lecture introductory science courses for nonscience majors do not have a lab component and hence do not provide much opportunity for students to engage in the practice of science. I have developed a new instructional activity called Dorm Room Labs that enables students to conduct hands-on activities as homework (or dorm room work) to…

E-learning strategies for the teaching unit Structure and States of Matter were developed. Students' achievements and the percentages of misconceptions were compared between experimental groups taught using web-based learning material (WBLM) used as homework after conventional teaching at school (EG1), and at school settings (EG2) with the control…

London dispersion forces (LDFs) are the most fundamental of the noncovalent interactions in that they are interactions that act between all molecular species and require only that students can use the "electron cloud" model of atomic structure. In this longitudinal study we investigate how students respond to prompts, designed to elicit…