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Lisa A. Bonner; Jalisa H. Ferguson – Journal of College Science Teaching, 2025
Condensed courses are commonly used across academia as a means for students to catch up or get ahead of their curriculum. Instructors may be hesitant to teach such courses due to concerns about limited knowledge retention and reduced academic rigor. We sought to determine if there are any differences in changes of student attitudes before and…
Descriptors: Organic Chemistry, Science Instruction, Barriers, Academic Standards
Edward N. Harris; Evan A. Schroder; Teryn J. Berks – Smart Learning Environments, 2024
Concept-heavy courses such as Biochemistry in life and physical science curricula are challenging for many college-aged students. It is easy for students to disengage in a lecture and not learn the subject matter while in class. To improve student learning and participation, we employed a flipped format for the first half of the course and…
Descriptors: Biochemistry, Flipped Classroom, Science Instruction, Teaching Methods
Musa Adekunle Ayanwale; Jamiu Oluwadamilare Amusa; Adekunle Ibrahim Oladejo; Funmilayo Ayedun – Interchange: A Quarterly Review of Education, 2024
The study focuses on assessing the proficiency levels of higher education students, specifically the physics achievement test (PHY 101) at the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN). This test, like others, evaluates various aspects of knowledge and skills simultaneously. However, relying on traditional models for such tests can result in…
Descriptors: Item Response Theory, Difficulty Level, Item Analysis, Test Items
Soojeong Jeong; Justin Rague; Kaylee Litson; David F. Feldon; M. Jeannette Lawler; Kenneth Plummer – Education and Information Technologies, 2025
DBL is a novel pedagogical approach intended to improve students' conditional knowledge and problem-solving skills by exposing them to a sequence of branching learning decisions. The DBL software provided students with ample opportunities to engage in the expert decision-making processes involved in complex problem-solving and to receive…
Descriptors: Decision Making, Learning Processes, Introductory Courses, Science Education
Novák, Matej; Petr, Jan; Tomáš, Ditrich – Journal of Baltic Science Education, 2021
For the possibility of using competitive tasks from the Biology Olympiad (BiO), either directly or after certain adaptations for everyday teaching tasks in the teaching process, it was aimed to determine if students could work meaningfully with them. The success of 2nd-year secondary school students (n = 113) in solutions of tasks (n = 5)…
Descriptors: Secondary School Students, Biology, Competition, Science Achievement
Qi Huang; Daniel M. Bolt; Weicong Lyu – Large-scale Assessments in Education, 2024
Large scale international assessments depend on invariance of measurement across countries. An important consideration when observing cross-national differential item functioning (DIF) is whether the DIF actually reflects a source of bias, or might instead be a methodological artifact reflecting item response theory (IRT) model misspecification.…
Descriptors: Test Items, Item Response Theory, Test Bias, Test Validity
Yangqiuting Li; Chandralekha Singh – Physical Review Physics Education Research, 2025
Research-based multiple-choice questions implemented in class with peer instruction have been shown to be an effective tool for improving students' engagement and learning outcomes. Moreover, multiple-choice questions that are carefully sequenced to build on each other can be particularly helpful for students to develop a systematic understanding…
Descriptors: Physics, Science Instruction, Science Tests, Multiple Choice Tests
Jannis Weber; Thomas Wilhelm – Physical Review Physics Education Research, 2024
Students experience many difficulties learning the fundamental relationships in Newtonian mechanics, partly due to preexisting mental models that originate from their everyday lives. These preconceptions often persist even after instruction in mechanics and lead to a supposed incompatibility between physics lessons in school and personal…
Descriptors: Physics, Science Instruction, Scientific Concepts, Mechanics (Physics)
Goolsby-Cole, Cody; Bass, Sarah M.; Stanwyck, Liz; Leupen, Sarah; Carpenter, Tara S.; Hodges, Linda C. – Journal of College Science Teaching, 2023
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…
Descriptors: Science Instruction, Computer Assisted Testing, Cheating, STEM Education
Abukari, Moses Abdullai; Marifa, Huaru Alhassan; Samari, Jonathan Ayelsoma; Dorsah, Philip; Abudu, Fatao – Problems of Education in the 21st Century, 2022
The concept of hybridisation is one of the most difficult concepts for chemistry students to grasp at all levels of learning. Research showed the students conceptual difficulty ranged from their lack of the prerequisite knowledge for grasping the topic hybridisation to chemical bond formation and orientations of atomic orbitals. This study…
Descriptors: High School Students, Difficulty Level, Student Attitudes, Science Achievement
Saatçioglu, Fatima Münevver; Atar, Hakan Yavuz – Participatory Educational Research, 2020
This study examined the existence of latent classes in TIMSS 2015 data from three countries, Singapure, Turkey and South Africa, were analyzed using Mixture Item Response Theory (MixIRT) models (Rasch, 1PL, 2PL and 3PL) on 18 multiple-choice items in the science subtest. Based on the findings, it was concluded that the data obtained from TIMSS…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Item Response Theory, Achievement Tests, International Assessment
Boesdorfer, Sarah B.; Daugherty, Jeremy – Journal of Science Education and Technology, 2020
Based in the tenants of standards-based grading or specifications grading systems, earning digital badges allows students to engage with content until they demonstrate the required knowledge through assessments to earn the badge. Using digital badges to show completion of criteria has gathered attention, but a study involving their use in a…
Descriptors: High School Students, Chemistry, Science Instruction, Honors Curriculum
Liou, Pey-Yan; Bulut, Okan – Research in Science Education, 2020
The purpose of this study was to examine eighth-grade students' science performance in terms of two test design components, item format, and cognitive domain. The portion of Taiwanese data came from the 2011 administration of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), one of the major international large-scale assessments…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Middle School Students, Grade 8, Science Achievement
Quílez, Juan – Studies in Science Education, 2019
This study consists of a categorisation of the vocabulary of chemistry, focusing on the terminological difficulties students face when learning this subject. Therefore, this classification intends to provide chemistry teachers an awareness of the language barriers students must overcome in their understanding of this scientific discipline. Two…
Descriptors: Chemistry, Science Instruction, Verbs, Vocabulary Development
Tsaparlis, Georgios – Journal of Baltic Science Education, 2020
This work analyses students' failure in the 2019 Nationwide Chemistry Examination in Greece, which concerns secondary education graduates, competing for admission to higher education Greek institutions. The distinction of thinking skills into higher and lower order (HOTS and LOTS) is used as a theoretical tool for this analysis. The examination…
Descriptors: Thinking Skills, Science Instruction, Chemistry, Academic Failure