Over the past several decades, science education reform has emphasized moving from content driven courses to more interactive, inquiry-based methodologies. This change has been supported by research by Chi (2009) and represented as three-dimensional learning in the Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2013). The typical structure of many high…

Students in their first semester at university were asked to pose their own questions, known as quecture questions, for each learning topic. This was as part of their weekly preparation for flipped lectures on two parallel compulsory biology courses. Quecture questions are intended to engage students, particularly those with educational…

Photovoice is a type of participatory action research in which individuals document their experiences through photography. Through the taking, captioning, and reflecting on photographs that they have taken, participants are able to affect change within their communities. Participants also take part in an interview or focus group about their photos…

Student awareness and selection of learning strategies are predictors of academic success. Yet, little is known about learning strategies of students in university preparation science courses, who are frequently mature-aged or underrepresented students. This lack of knowledge potentially hinders tailoring reflective learning experiences, specific…

Modeling is a scientific practice that supports creative reasoning, motivates inquiry, and facilitates community sense-making. This paper explores students' perspectives on modeling in an undergraduate laboratory course, Authentic Inquiry through Modeling (AIM-Bio), in which they proposed, tested, and revised their own models. We conducted…

Prior research has indicated that students in the undergraduate physics lab divide work inequitably with regard to gender. In this work, we further probed women's experiences in lab group work, focusing on women who take on managerial and leadership roles in the lab. We interviewed and surveyed women enrolled in a sophomore-level project-based lab…

In mid-March 2020, due to the novel coronavirus, my 300-level Environmental Sampling Methods lecture/laboratory course transitioned to distance learning. After this move, the primary focus of the course became the laboratory. To do this, I revised my three remaining laboratory exercises (i.e., water quality, soil quality, environmental microbes)…

Mechanobiology is an interdisciplinary field that aims to understand how physical forces impact biological systems. Enhancing our knowledge of mechanobiology has become increasingly important for understanding human disease and developing novel therapeutics. There is a societal need to teach diverse students principles of mechanobiology so that we…

This article presents a case study of the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) in high-school biology project-based learning. The study's main goal was to conduct an in-depth, qualitative examination of the students' experiences and the development of their skills over the course of this project. The following research questions were…

In this qualitative study, we examined the process of active learning from the perspective of undergraduate students in a high-enrollment introductory biology class. Eight students participated in a series of five interviews throughout the semester that examined their experiences during and after class. Grades were collected for each student at…

The rapid transition to remote teaching in the spring of 2020 posed particular challenges for laboratory courses, which often involve students working hands-on with equipment in collaborative environments. Replicating in-person experiments was especially challenging for advanced lab courses that utilize specialized apparatus, which could not be…

In this study, action research was used over two years to refine the implementation of process-oriented guided inquiry learning for chemistry students in an academic development programme at a research-intensive South African university. Students' responses to guided inquiry were collected based on a three-pillar framework underpinned by cognitive…

Undergraduates who participate in research experiences are more likely to persist as majors and pursue careers in STEM fields. Traditional undergraduate research experiences often involve field or lab work, which can be costly or have participation barriers for some students. Large, publicly available online datasets provide an alternative. This…

Research shows that various stereotypes about science and science learning, such as science being filled with hard and dry content, laboratory experiments, and male-dominated work environments, have resulted in feelings of distance from science in students' minds. This study explores children's experiences of science learning and science identity.…

National calls to improve student academic success in college have sparked the development of bridge programs designed to help students transition from high school to college. We designed a 2-week Summer Bridge program that taught introductory biology content in an active-learning way. Through a set of exploratory interviews, we unexpectedly…