Peer Instruction gives practice in the abstract language of physics, addresses common misconceptions among students, and is more effective than traditional lecturing. However, it is not clear what makes Peer Instruction effective nor how we might improve the method. An emerging perspective is that what makes Peer Instruction effective is how it…

Think-aloud interviews have been a valuable but underused tool in statistics education research. Think-alouds, in which students narrate their reasoning in real time while solving problems, differ in important ways from other types of cognitive interviews and related education research methods. Beyond the uses already found in the statistics…

We investigate conditions in which novices make some reference errors when programming. We asked students from introductory programming courses to perform a simple code-writing task that required constructing references to objects and their attributes. By experimentally manipulating the nature of the attributes in the tasks, from identifying…

Researchers have documented many misconceptions students hold about sampling variability. This study takes a different approach--instead of identifying shortcomings, we consider the productive reasoning pieces students construct as they reason about sampling distributions. We interviewed eight undergraduate students newly enrolled in an…

Confusion is an important epistemic emotion because it can help students focus their attention and effort when solving complex learning tasks. However, unresolved confusion can be detrimental because it may result in students' disengagement. This is especially concerning in simulation environments using discovery-based learning, which puts more of…

How to support students in programming learning has been a great research challenge in the last years. To address this challenge, prior works have mainly focused on proposing solutions based on syntactic analysis to provide students with personalized feedback about their grammatical programming errors and misconceptions. However, syntactic…

Understanding the students' programming misconceptions is critical in that it identifies the reasons why students make errors in programming and allows instructors to design instructions accordingly. This study investigated the mental models of programming concepts held by pre-service teachers who were novice programmers. In an introductory…

With the expansion of computer science (CS) education, CS teachers in K-12 schools should be cognizant of student misconceptions and be prepared to help students establish accurate understanding of computer science and programming. This exploratory design-based research (DBR) study implemented a data-driven approach to identify secondary school…

Developing students' algorithmic and computational thinking is currently a major objective for primary and secondary education in many countries around the globe. Literature suggests that students face at various difficulties in programming processes, because of their mental models about basic programming constructs. Arrays constitute the first…

Newton's second law is one of the cornerstones of the introductory physics curriculum, but it can still trouble a large number of students well after its introduction, hobbling their ability to apply the concept to problem solving and to related concepts, such as momentum, circular motion, and orbits. While there are several possibilities for…

A small number of studies have investigated student understanding of vector addition and subtraction in generic or introductory physics contexts, but in almost all cases the questions posed were in the vector arrow representation. In a series of experiments involving over 1000 students and several semesters, we investigated student understanding…

In this paper we describe student use of a series of connected online problem-solving activities to remediate atmospheric carbon budget misconceptions held by undergraduate university students. In particular, activities were designed to address a common misconception about conservation of mass when students assume a simplistic, direct relationship…

We modified the Just-in-Time Teaching approach and developed a dual safeguard web-based interactive (DGWI) teaching system for an introductory physics course. The system consists of four instructional components that improve student learning by including warm-up assignments and online homework. Student and instructor activities involve activities…

This paper examines students' achievements in solving problems and their misunderstandings when using models. A mixed research methodology was applied. Quantitative research investigated how the performance of students with various levels of high school GPAs correlated with their rating of their lecturers' teaching proficiency. Four lecturers and…

This article, the second of a two-part series, features 13 "My Favorite Assignments" that were introduced at the Association for Business Communication's 82nd annual conference held in Dublin, Ireland, in 2017. The pedagogical innovations include assignments that teach students how to conduct primary research, present their findings,…