Concepts and practices surrounding measurement uncertainty are vital knowledge for physicists and are often emphasized in undergraduate physics laboratory courses. We have previously developed a research-based assessment instrument--the Survey of Physics Reasoning on Uncertainty Concepts in Experiments (SPRUCE)--to examine student proficiency with…

The 21st century technology has advanced to become an accessible beacon of education. The physical boundaries of the chemistry laboratory have expanded with the use of innovative virtual lab simulations despite disparate results from previous investigations of student performance comparing virtual lab simulations with traditional laboratory…

The teaching of laboratory skills to undergraduate students is central to all experimental sciences. In this setting, students must understand the experimental procedures as well as the fundamental principle(s) being demonstrated, all while learning within a limited time. Other limiting factors include access to equipment and reagents, resulting…

A traditional laboratory course with the primary learning outcome of improving students' theoretical knowledge has received much criticism over the years due to the lack of evidence that these goals have achieved. We report our efforts to redesign a traditional first-year organic and inorganic (also known as synthetic) laboratory course from…

Pre-laboratory tasks are a best practice for preparing students for learning in the laboratory. Virtual labs, which use virtual reality to place students in an emulation of a physical laboratory where they have the capacity to manipulate equipment and materials as approximations of scientific practice, are emerging as an alternative to the…

One of the main courses that have been affected by instructional technology is science education since the nature of topics covered by the science curriculum may require the usage of technology to teach them better. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effects of virtual laboratories on the development of gifted children's…

A large-enrollment, introductory physics laboratory course at the University of Colorado Boulder has undergone a recent transformation to help students' develop lab skills and better align students' views and beliefs about experimental physics with those of expert experimental physicists through engagement with authentic scientific practices. We…

Technology and validation methods for producing biodiesel have been updated and have kept advancing. Creative raw materials used in producing environmentally friendly biodiesels have also attracted interest from scientists. Thus, learning and teaching methods on biodiesel production at the high school level need to be up to date. However, there…

This article describes the implementation of a student-generated open educational resource project into a majors' organic chemistry laboratory. This scaffolded semester-long project was organized into six phases and designed to promote the goals of teaching students about both green chemistry and real-life applications of the reactions covered in…

This paper addresses the incorporation of a scaffolded infographic project into a majors' organic chemistry laboratory. Students were given the freedom to choose their topic with the stipulation that it must be relevant to both organic and green chemistry. This scaffolded project consisted of the following eight phases: (1) summarizing and…

For the past several decades, high-enrollment undergraduate chemistry laboratory experiences have favored traditional approaches involving disparate daily experiments with optimized protocols provided to students. This model often results in poor learning outcomes and low student engagement, and it lacks any attention to scientific inquiry. Here,…

Inquiry-based instruction facilitates students' acquisition of scientific abilities, but little is known about how rapidly college students master these skills, particularly when this form of instruction includes scaffolding and especially when those scaffolds are removed. To address this gap, this study aimed to evaluate the effect that removing…

Large introductory STEM courses have a reputation as "weed out" classes. These classes and their laboratory components are more often viewed by students as hurdles to overcome than valuable learning experiences relevant to their future careers. This perception especially impacts students who have a lower science identity and…

Three days into the academic year, the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly led to emergency remote teaching, ERT, of Chemical Experimentation--a revised alternative to the majors' General Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Costa Rica. The course was reoriented to support students' development of nontechnical experimentation skills and scientific…

St. Olaf College recently restructured its Summer Bridge Program (SBP) course for incoming low-income (LI) and first-generation (FG) college students from a non-major biology course, "Issues in Biology," to an interdisciplinary "Explorations in Science" course. Two significant changes were made with the intention of giving…