We use the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long (STPFaSL-Long), a research-based survey instrument with 78 items at the level of introductory physics, to investigate introductory and advanced students' difficulties with entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. We present an analysis of data from 12 different…

Research exploring a student's "path to purchase" when considering course selection has revealed a number of influential factors including course content, reputation, and professor style. To date, little is known about the direct (or indirect) influence that course titles and course descriptions have on student interest and enrollment in…

In three studies, college student participants read a description of ambiguous (i.e., neither explicitly positive nor explicitly negative) academic feedback from a faculty member. Evaluations of the ambiguous feedback were compared across participants' gender identities and levels of social and intellectual belonging in their academic majors and…

This study attempted to determine if placing videos in an asynchronous course influenced the learning experience. Data were examined for an introductory college statistics course comparing results pre and post implementation of videos in support of discussions, assignments, homework, quizzes, and exams. Frequency of external tutoring was…

The present study explored the antecedents and potential solutions to boredom in online English classrooms from the perspectives of 105 Thai EFL university students. Guided by a qualitative approach, an open-ended survey and semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data. The thematic analysis of the data revealed nine antecedents that…

Interdisciplinary introduction to quantum information science (QIS) courses are proliferating at universities across the US, but the experiences of instructors in these courses have remained largely unexplored in the discipline-based education research (DBER) communities. Here, we address this gap by reporting on the findings of a survey of…

This article presents the first-ever big data study of the student evaluation of teaching (SET) using artificial intelligence (AI). We train natural language processing (NLP) models on 1.6 million student evaluations from the US and the UK. We address two research questions: (1) are these models able to predict student ratings from the student…

In an immersive virtual reality (IVR) environment, this study investigated: (1) the role of learner characteristics in various learning and psychological outcomes, including knowledge retention, perceived learning, cognitive load, self-efficacy, enjoyment, presence, and usefulness; and (2) the relationship among these intended outcomes. Forty…

Both sequencing content and fading instructional support are scaffolding techniques designed to make it easier for learners to process information. While sequencing content separates problems into manageable parts before problem-solving, fading of instruction gradually reduces instructional support before problem-solving. Although cognitive load…

To identify clicker questions likely to provoke rich and engaging student discussions, we recorded the percentage of the class voting on each option on every clicker question used throughout each semester, encompassing nineteen sections of introductory statistics, taught by three instructors. Working from the hypothesis that seeing student votes…

The practice of completing a student evaluation of a professor's teaching effectiveness is a common experience among college students. Research of this practice can be found as early as the beginning part of last century. In recent years, a variety of web-based non-university approved tools are being utilized by students to communicate with their…

Introductory courses in mathematics and physical sciences are challenging for students and often have lower success rates than other comparable courses. In online courses, this is compounded by students employing surface learning strategies. Furthermore, it has been shown that students often do not utilize learning materials that are provided in…

A major challenge for distance learning in higher education is supporting course completion. Counteracting completion risk factors requires investigating their significance across (non)completion stages. We tested the predictability of known risk factors at each completion stage. Not initiating was explained by available time, low motivation and…

This research investigates how learning groups affect student learning from two perspectives: first, the amount of group work students do, and second, the role that they take within the group. It is not clear from the current research how a student's role in collaborative learning affects his/her development of critical thinking and the…

Students are commonly in a high cognitive load state when they encounter sophisticated knowledge. Whether the novel augmented reality (AR) technology can be utilized in an online learning course to explain complicated scientific concepts in a more understandable manner to students during the COVID-19 period is an unaddressed issue. This study aims…