To prepare students to use science knowledge in their later personal or professional lives, we must attend to what they believe it means to know and learn science (i.e., epistemology). Unfortunately, we have little understanding of how students' epistemologies shift and are stabilized as they navigate their science courses. Researchers have made…

Biochemistry, a complicated basic course in health sciences, plays a fundamental role in describing pathogenic mechanism of illness in molecular terms, and is required to be learned for all medical students. Due to various obstacles to biochemistry learning and teaching, there is a pressing issue of curriculum reform to arouse the student's…

Undergraduate general chemistry courses are often perceived in a negative light by students. Student attitudes towards chemistry play a significant role in their success in chemistry and retention in STEM altogether. Research has shown in K-12 classrooms that care-based instruction strategies can help to improve student attitudes towards…

This study details the efforts taken in remotely teaching a large organic chemistry lecture course in the midst of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The course lectures were taught synchronously via Zoom and student feedback was gathered regarding effective teaching strategies and assessment tools in a remote course setting. The precourse and…

Traditional lab courses separate lectures from lab work, whereas integrated lab-lecture courses (also known as studio courses) combine both in a single session under one instructor. Previous studies suggest that integrated lab-lecture courses may have the potential to enhance the learning experience for introductory-level students. In this…

A desired outcome of education reform efforts is for undergraduates to effectively integrate knowledge across disciplines in order to evaluate and address real-world issues. Yet there are few assessments designed to measure if and how students think interdisciplinarily. Here, a sample of science faculty were surveyed to understand how they…

This three-paper dissertation addresses the experience and the implementation of evidence-based learning practices in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)/biology education. Study 1 explored instructional strategies and student perceptions and preferences for various teaching practices in graduate and undergraduate classrooms…

Anatomy and Physiology should be considered a gateway course due to its challenging scope and key role as a foundational prerequisite for many degree programs. Students often encounter gateway classes early in their college career when they are academically vulnerable due to their lack of university experience. A&P teaching methods are…

Despite recent interest in online learning, systematic comparisons of online learning environments with traditional classroom environments are limited, particularly in the sciences. Here, we report on a systematic comparison of an online and face-to-face classroom for a sophomore-level, lecture-only introductory inorganic chemistry course that is…

This paper represents the second contribution from an action research study on a bachelor-level quantum chemistry and spectroscopy course. In the proposed instructional model, active learning principles are extended outside lectures to form a student-centred course structure. The new model resulted in superior learning outcomes compared to a class…

Metabolism and its regulation is one of the most complex and difficult topics for students learning biochemistry. A problem-/case-based learning (PBL) approach can be useful to help biochemistry students to fulfill the goal of acquiring an integrated view of metabolism and its regulation. The present article describes our experience enrolling…

A novel undergraduate analytical chemistry experiment involving the identification and quantification of linalool in essential oils was developed. The experiment uses the internal standard method with headspace solid phase microextraction (SPME) and gas chromatography--mass spectrometry (GC-MS). This method is applicable to any linalool-containing…

The two-semester General Chemistry laboratory sequence for nonchemistry majors at James Madison University has recently made the transition from expository, confirmation experiments to project-based (first semester) and research-based (second semester) curricula; this narrative will describe the development and current state of the Brewing Science…

Despite efforts to make school science appealing, students' negative attitude toward it persists globally. This qualitative study elucidates how and why undergraduate students in Japan had declining attitudes toward school science during primary and secondary school. Twenty-two first- and second-year students at a Japanese national university…

Courses that are typically hands-on, like equine science, may be more challenging online, but there is a higher demand for online offerings. With an increase in students taking online equine courses, a review of teaching methods was conducted to determine students' preferred teaching tools in online equine courses. The survey was sent out to…