As an instructional framework, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can guide science teachers to purposefully apply evidence-based instructional practices to increase engagement and learning of students with disabilities (Israel, Ribuffo, and Smith 2014; Marino et al. 2014; Ok et al. 2016). This article describes how to use the Universal Design…

Collaborative learning is an approach employed by instructors to facilitate learning and improve learner's performance. Mobile learning can accommodate a variety of learning approaches. This study, therefore, investigated the effects of collaborative learning styles on performance of students in a mobile learning environment. The specific purposes…

The goals for engaging students in peer learning range from positioning students as knowledgeable others to promoting social-emotional learning goals to providing contexts in which students can articulate and compare their thinking to supporting opportunities to cogenerate solutions to complex problems. There are a number of complexities…

Argumentation is one of the central practices in science learning and helps deepen students' conceptual understanding. Students should learn how to communicate ideas including procedure tests, data interpretations, and investigation outcomes in verbal and written forms through argument structure. This article presents a negotiation model to…

Many times students are given the task of keeping a science notebook, but do not fully understand the process or purpose of this endeavour. Science notebooks contain not only data but also questions, predictions, observations, and reflections from their experiences in science. To maximize the effectiveness of the science notebook, teachers must…

This article presents an authentic writing opportunity to help ninth-grade students use the writing process in a science classroom to write and illustrate picture books for fourth-grade students to demonstrate and share their understanding of a biology unit on cells. By creating a picture book, students experience the writing process, understand…

Since 2002, a multidisciplinary program has been used to encourage science students to build on their chemical knowledge and to appreciate how it applies to the world around them. The program is interactive and instills a new set of core learning skills that are often underrepresented in undergraduate curricula, namely, cooperative learning,…

The objective of this study was to develop an online report writing activity that was a constructive and cooperative learning process for a course on traditional general physics experiments. Wiki, a CMC authoring tool, was used to construct the writing platform. Fifty-eight undergraduate students (33 men and 25 women), working in randomly assigned…

Students are using the tools of scientists when keeping a science notebook. They are also keeping track of their thinking and the changes to their original ideas. To bring students' existing ideas out for examination, the author implemented a "quick-write," which entails asking an open-ended question and having the students write all they know in…

This paper presents a set of activities, which scaffolds students to succeed in the standard Physics gateway course. The set of instructional activities that were designed included four distinct components: reflective writing, collaborative groups, critiques, and an essay question on the examination. Each activity was designed to lead into and…

This case study aimed to determine the nature of student interactions in small groups in an elementary classroom utilizing the Science Writing Heuristic approach. Fifth grade students were audio-recorded over four units of study while working in small groups to generate knowledge claims after conducting student-directed investigations. Analysis…

This document presents the proceedings of the 20th Annual Research Forum held June 25, 2015, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 21 action research papers: (1) History Lives! The Use of Simulations in a High School Social Studies Classroom (Lydia Adkins); (2) Using Francophone Music in the High…

Increasingly, national stakeholders express concern that U.S. college graduates cannot adequately solve problems and think critically. As a set of cognitive abilities, critical thinking skills provide students with tangible academic, personal, and professional benefits that may ultimately address these concerns. As an instructional method, writing…