Under the new ABET accreditation framework, students are expected to demonstrate "an ability to develop and conduct appropriate experimentation, analyze and interpret data, and use engineering judgment to draw conclusions." Traditional, recipe-based labs provide few opportunities for students to engage in realistic experimental design or…

To enhance students' learning and help them understand the whole picture of the field of inorganic chemistry, an inorganic laboratory technique course was designed that uses scaffolded, inquiry-based lab experiments and project-based learning. The scaffolded, inquiry-based laboratories taught in the first 8 weeks of the course helped students…

Pre-nursing students of an introductory Microbiology laboratory class, having learnt typical microbiological techniques during the semester, gained the confidence of conducting an inquiry-based project as part of their lab course work. Students cooperatively performed a microbiological analysis, to evaluate safety of sushi. This paper presents…

Laboratory courses are often designed using step-by-step protocols which encourage students to conduct experiments without thinking about what they are doing or why they are doing it. Such course design limits the growth of our students as scientists and can make it more difficult for a student to transition to the expectations of a research…

This paper reports on an investigation into individual differences and group differences in learning styles, test anxiety levels, task performance, and students' attitudes regarding cooperative learning in beginning and advanced biology classes. The Transactional Analysis Inventory (TAI) and Test Anxiety Scale (TAS) were administered to two groups…

This paper discusses some of the issues involved and lessons learned in including a formal computer laboratory component in a freshman mathematics course for business administration students at Monmouth University (New Jersey), focusing on both the technical and the pedagogical aspects of the component of the course. The concept is modeled after…