Students in an animal physiology course are required to have completed prerequisite cell biology and genetics courses that include discussion of basic properties and functions of the cell membrane. However, while many students remember basic information about membrane structure, they often have difficulty relating that structure to membrane…

This study explores the importance of general chemistry as a prerequisite for organic chemistry lecture courses. The students taking organic chemistry were categorized into three groups: (1) those who had finished the prerequisite before starting organic chemistry, (2) those who had not finished the prerequisite before starting organic chemistry,…

Health professional students often struggle with anatomy coursework despite undergraduate coursework in anatomy. Educators must identify early on whether students may struggle in order to target remediation. The purpose of the study was to elucidate whether an assessment tool administered before the start of a professional anatomy course…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection in Investigating and Improving Quantum Education through Research.] The modern physics course is a crucial gateway for physics majors as it provides an introduction to concepts beyond the scope of the K-12 education. This study collected 167 modern physics syllabi from 127 U.S. research-intensive…

A required first-year laboratory course was overhauled into a semester-long biosciences course-based undergraduate research experience (BioCURE) with a goal of enhancing learning and improving retention. Student attributes and outcomes were continually monitored by the University's Institutional Research office over a 5-year period and compared…

We developed a Quantum Mechanics Conceptual Understanding Survey (QMCUS) in this study. The survey was conducted using a quantitative methodology. A multiple-choice survey of 35 questions was administered to 338 undergraduate students. Three experienced quantum mechanics instructors examined the validity of the survey. The reliability of our…

Physics and mathematics are interrelated as part of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. The learning of science is supported by mathematical skills and knowledge. The aim of this paper is to determine the cognitive obstacles of in-service undergraduate physics student-teachers' understanding of the concept of…

In recent years, student-generated stop-motion animations (SMAs) have been employed to support sharing, constructing, and representing knowledge in different science domains and across age groups from pre-school to university students. The purpose of this review is to give an overview of research in this field and to synthesize the findings. For…

Universities use prerequisites to regulate the path of students through a program or major. However, the impact of prerequisites on follow-up courses in anatomy and physiology is not well understood. If success in follow-up courses depends on completion of prerequisite courses, then students should earn higher grades on exam questions that assess…

The vast extent to which quantitative prerequisites vary among post-secondary geoscience programs often presents a challenge for educators and students alike in courses for which math and physics are foundational. This study discusses the design of GEOAppS, a suite of educational numerical models, and its application toward lowering the…

Representational competence is essential for the acquisition of conceptual understanding in physics. It enables the interpretation of diagrams, graphs, and mathematical equations, and relating these to one another as well as to observations and experimental outcomes. In this study, we present the initial validation of a newly developed…

Blended learning has become increasingly common in higher education. Recent findings suggest that blended learning achieves better student outcomes than traditional face-to-face teaching in gross anatomy courses. While face-to-face content is perceived as important to learning there is less evidence for the significance of online content in…

Despite the ubiquity of prerequisites in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics curricula, there has been minimal effort to assess their value in a data-driven manner. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, we examined the impact of prerequisites in the context of a microbiology lecture and lab course pairing.…

Formative assessment has long been identified as a critical element to teaching for conceptual development in science. It is therefore important for university instructors to have an arsenal of formative assessment tools at their disposal which enable them to effectively uncover and diagnose all students' thinking, not just the most vocal or…

This study aims at investigating the effects of case studies developed by the researchers on Science Teaching students' understanding of "gases, liquids and solids," and their attitudes towards chemistry lessons. The study was conducted on 52 freshmen from the Department of Science Teaching at a university in Turkey. Pre-test and…