The prevalence of online instruction highlights the importance of videos in education. Pedagogies that include elements that actively engage students are accepted as an improvement over more passive modes of instruction. How can we transfer the advantages of active engagement to instruction via video? Previous research on instructional videos has…

Inquiry-based learning is a learning-and-teaching approach that allows students to gather and build knowledge of scientific facts by asking questions. To gain an understanding of the impact of such an instruction, this study examines the effectiveness of Video Inquiry-based Cooperative Learning (VICL) and Video Inquiry-based Learning (VIL) on…

Students often experience science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses as competitive, weed-out spaces. Learning Assistants (LAs) have potential to improve students' experiences in these courses. Previously, we elucidated themes describing the impact of LAs on students' sense of STEM belonging and science-related confidence in…

In this paper, we present activities that help students deepen their understanding of basic electrostatics using an electroscope in combination with the photoelectric effect. The students investigate the behaviour of an isolated electroscope when the metal housing of the electroscope is charged. The activities follow the framework of the…

Student engagement is often described as 'the holy grail of learning' (Sinatra, Heddy and Lombardi, 2015, p.1). Higher education educators have been implementing different pedagogical approaches to promote active learning with the aim of improving student engagement. This paper proposes an activity-based learning approach with the use of…

Prior research has indicated that students in the undergraduate physics lab divide work inequitably with regard to gender. In this work, we further probed women's experiences in lab group work, focusing on women who take on managerial and leadership roles in the lab. We interviewed and surveyed women enrolled in a sophomore-level project-based lab…

This dissertation focuses on three manuscripts all related to bolstering science achievement through recommendations from the National Research Council (NRC) regarding the teaching and learning of science. The manuscripts address meeting the NRC's call to incorporate curriculum and assessment that lead to more in-depth knowledge that can be…

The role of ChatGPT and higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) as predictors of physics inquiry among uppersecondary students has yet to be widely explored. Therefore, this research aimed to examine upper-secondary students' role in ChatGPT (convenience and quality (CQ), motivation and engagement (ME), and accuracy and trust (AT)) and HOTS as…

Science teaching in general and physics teaching in particular often fail to meet the challenges of motivating and engaging learners. Consequently, students do not adequately understand concepts, leading to the poor acquisition of expected practical skills. In response to this need, we conducted a study to document physics teachers' instructional…

Project-Based Learning (PjBL) curricula offer unique opportunities for student engagement, yet they do not guarantee an engaging classroom. Furthermore, there has been little scholarly work on PjBL pedagogy that supports student engagement. This qualitative research study explores enactment of a PjBL Advanced Placement Physics 1 curriculum and the…

In the past few decades, educators and physics education researchers have been developing and evaluating instructional approaches designed to improve students' conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills in physics for students with different prior preparation and backgrounds. These instructional approaches often require students to be…

To meet the demands of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), teachers need to reconsider their current instructional practices, shifting from learning about scientific ideas to making sense of phenomena and solving problems using three-dimensional learning components. Project-Based Learning (PBL) provides a framework for creating…

Having discussions and working together in groups with other learners is the indicator of the collaboration aspect of engagement. Collaborative engagement can be fostered through active learning approaches, since they provide more opportunities for interaction among learners. In Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) classrooms, small…

This paper explores the integration of STEM activities in teaching and learning, emphasizing the importance of innovative pedagogical approaches in effectively introducing theoretical concepts, such as variables and functions, and merging them with practical applications. Drawing on existing literature, this study investigates the integration of…

Introductory physics labs often focus on a series of common experiments intending to teach the student the measurement side of physics. While these experiments have the potential to be quite instructive, we observed that our students often consider them to be boring and monotonous, which often leads to them being uninstructive. To combat this, we…