The COVID-19 pandemic presented many challenges for educators. In Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs), where students learn about the scientific process by working on novel research, few resources for remote learning were available. Here the impact of changes to course delivery format on student learning gains in a…

This study examines differences in the ability of undergraduate students, taught in lecture-based or context-based general chemistry courses, to describe reaction kinetics. The subjects included 210 students from a residential science college at a large research university. Two open-ended questions were used to engage students' surface knowledge…

The mismatch between high school and college learning environments creates a barrier to student success in STEM majors in college. The high school learning environment relies on surface learning in which skills such as re-reading and memorizing are sufficient for academic success. The college learning environment, particularly in STEM disciplines,…

As community colleges are increasingly offering distance education courses, it is of great interest to examine student performance specifically in science courses. The objective of this study was to examine the student success and retention rates in anatomy courses that were offered face-to-face (F2F) compared to hybrid offerings. In the F2F…

Recruiting students in STEM majors to fill the gap in STEM workforce is a continued challenge, which can be addressed by introducing scientific principles through hand-on activities to the students at an early stage. This paper presents the design, implementation and assessment of a chemistry-related workshop for sixth grade students that were…

The perception of science as boring is a major issue for teachers at all instructional levels. Tertiary classes especially suffer from a reputation for being dry, instructor-centered, and irrelevant to the lives of students. However, previous research has shown that science can be interesting to students if it is presented in such a manner as to…

The Department of Physics at EKU [Eastern Kentucky University] with support from the National Science Foundations Course Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement Program has successfully converted our entire introductory physics sequence, both algebra-based and calculus-based courses, to an activity-based format where laboratory activities,…