Background: Today, the importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education and training is widely recognised and accepted. Computer programming courses have become essential in higher education to nurture students' programming, analysis and computational skills, which are vital for success in all STEM fields and areas.…

This article illustrates the potential for hackathons to serve as an innovative educational tool in addressing the underrepresentation of minority communities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Using Merced, California--a region recognised for its agricultural economy, socioeconomic disparities, and diverse…

With the continuous development of embodied cognition theory and virtual reality (VR) technology, its application in teaching has been paid more and more attention by researchers. However, there are still few practical studies on the combination of VR technology and embodied learning. Starting from literature research, the paper analyzes the…

Research has frequently demonstrated negative effects of placing students into developmental education, but very little inquiry has considered the impact of placing students into different levels of non-developmental coursework. The present study explored this issue within sequenced pairs of STEM gateway courses using doubly-robust propensity…

In a three-year, practice-based, creative research project, the team designed a video game for undergraduate biology students that aimed to find the right balance between educational content and entertainment. The project involved 7 faculty members and 14 undergraduate students from biological science, design, computer science, and music. This…

The mass shift to Open-Book, Open-Web (OBOW) assessments during the pandemic highlighted new opportunities in Higher Education for developing accessible, authentic assessments that can reduce administrative load. Despite a plethora of research emerging on the effectiveness of OBOW assessments within disciplines, few currently evaluate their…

Biostatistics courses are integral to many undergraduate biology programs. Such courses have often been taught using point-and-click software, but these programs are now seldom used by researchers or professional biologists. Instead, biology professionals typically use programming languages, such as R, which are better suited to analyzing complex…

This paper presents three case studies that examined the use of ClassTranscribe in a diverse set of undergraduate engineering classes in 2019 and 2020 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ClassTranscribe, a video viewing system designed with accessibility and learning in mind, was first presented to the ASEE [American Society for…

Undergraduate research opportunities have expanded from elite universities in the United States to universities and institutions of all ranks and sizes. Research studies have shown positive outcomes in regards to the research experience for undergraduates (REU), such as enhanced research skills and competencies. However, with the widespread…

The aim of education in the 21st century is to cultivate a whole person, not just a professional. Therefore, obtaining an academic qualification (standard credentials) is not enough and other qualities (soft credentials) are also important, including the ability to properly package and present one's credentials and capabilities. This article…

Serious games seem to be a promising alternative to traditional practices for learning. Recently, their use in computer science education and learning programming became more widespread. Actually, many students in programming courses have difficulties to master all required competencies and skills especially at introductory level and games have…

We propose an integrated curriculum to establish essential abilities of computer programming for the freshmen of a physics department. The implementation of the graphical-based interfaces from Scratch to LabVIEW then to LabVIEW for Arduino in the curriculum "Computer-Assisted Instrumentation in the Design of Physics Laboratories" brings…

Between 2000 and 2016, the STEM industry reportedly added jobs at the rate of 28% while all jobs were growing at only 6%. However, 48% of bachelor's degree students and 69% of associate's degree students in STEM majors left their program of study between 2003 and 2009. The high attrition rate is often attributed to low student engagement, boredom,…

This paper presents an in-depth empirical analysis of a nine-week MOOC. This analysis provides novel results regarding participants' profiles and use of built-in and external social tools. The results served to detect seven participants' patterns and conclude that the forum was the social tool preferred to contribute to the MOOC.

Bioinformatics education can be broadly defined as the teaching and learning of the use of computer and information technology, along with mathematical and statistical analysis for gathering, storing, analyzing, interpreting, and integrating data to solve biological problems. The recent surge of genomics, proteomics, and structural biology in the…