Digital learning tools and laboratory simulations have been an area of great interest not only due to the advancements of at-home learning but also by allowing students and institutions access to experiences they would not have otherwise due to the high cost of commercial instrumentation. The need for online learning tools became especially…

Evolution is the central concept of biology and key to a comprehensive understanding of any complex biological interaction. It has proven to be a particularly difficult subject for both teachers and students. Hybrid teaching environments have the potential to support students in learning about complex topics and simultaneously enable researchers…

Electron transport chain and oxidative phosphorylation are always a challenging topic for students studying metabolism. We had adopted blended learning in metabolism teaching and evaluated the learning experiences of students. In this project, a pre-class learning aid the "Story Mode" and a post-class learning aid the "Revision…

DockIT is an interactive molecular docking tool suitable for teaching students about concepts related to drug-receptor interaction. Its most unique feature is the ability to model both local and global conformational change in the receptor based on information derived from the trajectory of a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. The workshop…

We present a case study of a conversation between ourselves and an artificial intelligence-based chatbot ChatGPT. We asked the chatbot to respond to a basic physics question that will be familiar to most physics teachers: 'A teddy bear is thrown into the air. What is its acceleration in the highest point?' The chatbot's responses, while…

In this paper I describe an interactive Gauss's law computer simulation using the GlowScript programming environment. The simulation calculates a point charge's electric field at locations on the surface of a Gaussian cube and displays the electric field in GlowScript's 3D graphics window. The point charge can be moved, and the electric field…

Energy is a disciplinary core idea and a cross-cutting concept in the K-12 Framework for Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). As numerous authors point out, the energy model in these standards emphasizes the connections between energy and systems. Using energy ideas to interpret or make sense of phenomena means…

In this paper, we have demonstrated the feasibility of using digital technologies to study the behavior of rubber balloons. The experiment to study the behavior of balloons was presented in a new way using the Vernier measuring system, Logger Pro 3 software, Tracker and Google Sheets. This allowed to significantly optimize the work, reduce…

Video games and immersive, narrative experiences are often called upon to help students understand difficult scientific concepts, such as sense of scale. However, the development of educational video games requires expertise and, frequently, a sizable budget. Here, we report on the use of an interactive text-style video game, NanoAdventure, to…

STEM education is widely recognized as a powerful means of cultivating well-rounded future talent. However, challenges such as difficulties in observation, declining learning interests, and the lack of teaching resources present obstacles to the implementation of STEM education in China. Virtual Reality (VR), with its immersive, interactive, and…

Solar limb darkening is a prominent feature seen in white images of the Sun: the brightness of the solar disk is greatest at the solar center and decreases radially outward towards the limb. White light images can be used to examine and even model limb darkening; however, the limb-darkening effect is, in fact, wavelength dependent. Limb darkening…

Elementary teachers require support through professional learning activities to enhance their climate change literacy and bolster their self-efficacy for teaching climate change. This study explores methods for supporting in-service elementary teachers' self-efficacy in climate change teaching by examining the impact of professional learning…

Granular flows appear frequently in the natural world and in civil engineering applications. These flows can exhibit features which are surprising and counter-intuitive and are often used to test the limits of the classical continuum approximation for modelling of fluid flows. An important sub-class of the granular flows are the gravity-driven…

We present an experiment designed to study standing waves in a tube with one closed end. Two smartphones are used, one to emit a sound signal with a chosen frequency and another equipped with a microphone to detect the sound pressure level inside the tube. Due to the finite diameter of the tube, the standing wave node (or antinode) appears…

Thermodynamic processes are often presented in so called P-V diagrams and the processes are often isobaric, isochoric, isothermal, and adiabatic. The purpose of the qualitative research reported here was to explore students' reasoning and interpretation of P-V diagrams that were presented by the help of GeoGebra. The research group had 15 students…