Active learning pedagogical approaches and methodologies have been shown to increase undergraduate student success. Specifically, the flipped classroom approach pushes course content outside of the classroom, allowing for the focus of each class period to be centered on student-student interactions and reducing student cognitive load in comparison…

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…

The effect of class size on student learning has numerous policy implications and has been a major subject of conversation and research for decades. Despite this, few studies have been done on class size in the context of university settings or physics courses. This dissertation helps address that gap in the literature by quantitatively analyzing…

A qualitative pre-/post-test case study was conducted to explore the influence of inquiry-based education in eliciting learners' understanding of the particulate nature of matter in the gaseous phase. Two grade four classes (n=116) were conveniently and purposively sampled from two farm schools in Pretoria, South Africa. Data was collected through…

Students entering into a quantitative analysis course often struggle with connecting theoretical aspects of concepts from lecture to hands-on applications in the laboratory setting. A one-semester quantitative analysis course was redesigned to integrate active learning with a project-based curriculum that incorporated structured review of…

Interactive-engagement (IE) techniques consistently enhance conceptual learning gains relative to traditional-lecture courses, but attitudinal gains typically emerge only in small, inquiry-based curricula. The current study evaluated whether a "scalable IE" curriculum--a curriculum used in a large course (~130 students per section) and…

Following collaboration between two chemistry lecturers and an academic developer an attempt was made to enhance the learning of students within a chemistry module through the adaptation of the delivery of content material. This paper reports a piece of practitioner led research which considered how effective the approach developed was upon the…

Recent experimental evidence indicates that the ability of adults to tolerate milk, cheese, and other lactose-containing dairy products is an autosomal dominant trait that co-evolved with dairy farming in Central Europe about 7,500 years ago. Among persons of European descent, this trait is strongly associated with a C to T substitution at a…

In this study, we used targeted active-learning activities to help students improve their ways of reasoning about carbon flow in ecosystems. The results of a validated ecology conceptual inventory (diagnostic question clusters [DQCs]) provided us with information about students' understanding of and reasoning about transformation of inorganic and…

The pedagogical value of having biochemistry and organic chemistry students build and manipulate physical models of chemical species is well established in the literature. Nevertheless, for the most part, the use of molecular models is generally limited to several laboratory exercises or to demonstrations in the classroom setting. A simple…

This article describes a new hands-on, or "kinesthetic," activity for use in a physiology lecture hall to help students comprehend an important concept in cardiopulmonary physiology known as oxygen carrying capacity. One impetus for designing this activity was to address the needs of students who have a preference for kinesthetic…

A two-course sequence in electromagnetics (EM) was developed in order to address a perceived lack of student learning and engagement observed in a traditional, lecture-based EM course. The two-course sequence is named VECTOR: Vitalizing Electromagnetic Concepts To Obtain Relevance. This paper reports on the first course of the sequence. VECTOR…

This article presents results from a two-semester field test of the Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory (LSCI). Statistical analysis indicates that the LSCI has the sensitivity to measure statistically significant changes in students' understanding of light-related topics due to instruction in introductory astronomy courses and to distinguish…

In this article, we present an overview of a suite of light and spectroscopy education materials developed as part of Project LITE (Light Inquiry Through Experiments). We also present an analysis of how introductory college astronomy students using these Project LITE materials performed on the Light and Spectroscopy Concept Inventory (LSCI)…

We are delighted to welcome you to the International Conference on Education and New Developments 2015-END 2015, taking place in Porto, Portugal, from 27 to 29 of June. Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the human being, in the way one thinks, feels and…