This dissertation investigates the complexities associated with developing expertise in physics problem-solving and the methods for measuring and assessing the skills involved. Problem-solving skills are critical in today's rapidly changing world, and thus, it is important to emphasize them in education. However, lacking precise methods for…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection in Artificial Intelligence Tools in Physics Teaching and Physics Education Research.] Using a high-stakes thermodynamics exam as the sample (252 students, four multipart problems), we investigate the viability of four workflows for AI-assisted grading of handwritten student solutions. We find that the…

Digital automated assessment is a valuable and time-efficient tool for educators to provide immediate and objective feedback to learners. Automated assessment, however, puts high demands on the quality of the questions, alignment with the intended learning outcomes, and the quality of the feedback provided to the learners. We here describe the…

Building domain knowledge is essential to a student's success in any course. Chemistry, similar to other STEM disciplines, has a strong cumulative element (i.e., topic areas continuously build upon prior coursework). We employed the testing effect, in the form of post-exam retrieval quizzes, as a way to improve students' understanding of chemistry…

This paper reports our work on replacing lab report grading by post-online lab quizzes using Desire2Learn (D2L, an online course management software), specifically, how we circumvent some of the limitations imposed by D2L and the outcomes.

During the pandemic, the use of question pools for online testing was recommended to mitigate cheating, exposing multitudes of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students across the globe to this practice. Yet instructors may be unfamiliar with the ways that seemingly small changes between questions in a pool can expose…

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention to online delivery of teaching and assessment within the higher education sector. This article will reflect on the laboratory assessment of chemistry to undergraduate students on a pharmaceutical science program in the UK. With students prohibited from accessing laboratory environments, associated…

The current study measures the extent to which students' self-regulated learning tactics and learning outcomes change as the result of a deliberate, data-driven improvement in the learning design of mastery-based online learning modules. In the original design, students were required to attempt the assessment once before being allowed to access…

The focus of biology education has shifted from memorization to conceptual understanding of core biological concepts such as matter and energy relationships. To examine undergraduate learning about matter and energy, we incorporated constructed-response (CR) questions into an interactive computer-based tutorial. The objective of this tutorial is…

This paper discusses the results of two experiments assessing undergraduate students' beliefs about the random nature of molecular environments. Experiment 1 involved the implementation of a pilot adaptive assessment (n = 773) and focus group discussions with undergraduate students enrolled in first- through third-year biology courses; experiment…

The first-year undergraduate laboratory course in chemistry at the University of Bristol has been changed in an attempt to have students focus on learning practical skills, rather than on their experimental results. Analysis revealed a misalignment between the stated aims of the course--developing basic practical skills and developing laboratory…

This paper is designed to synopsize the efforts of a team of general chemistry teachers to enact assessments during the abrupt transition to online-only instruction and reflect on what was done successfully and what could be improved. The focus is on the extent remote, online assessments accurately measured student knowledge described within the…

Crowdsourcing is an important tool for collecting spatio-temporal data, which has various applications in education. The objectives of this study were to develop and test a laboratory exercise on soil erosion by water and field data crowdsourcing in an online introductory soil science course (FNR 2040: Soil Information Systems) at Clemson…

This paper describes the transfer from face-to-face education to emergency remote teaching of chemistry laboratory courses in a bachelor's degree in Pharmacy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The virtualization was carried out using videos of each experimental practice and questionnaires containing the experimental data needed. The contents were…

Mastery of jargon terms is an important part of student learning in biology and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics domains. In two experiments, we investigated whether prelecture quizzes enhance memory for jargon terms, and whether that enhanced familiarity can facilitate learning of related concepts that are encountered…