Evidence abounds that passive strategies such as rereading or highlighting are less effective than active strategies such as drawing models or explaining concepts to others. However, many studies have also reported that students tend to use learning strategies that they perceive as comfortable and easy, even when other strategies may be more…

Preparing for exams in introductory biology classrooms is a complex metacognitive task. Focusing on lower achieving students (those with entering ACT scores below the median at our institution), we compared the effect of two different assignments distributed ahead of exams by dividing classes in half to receive either terms to define or open-ended…

Use of high-stakes exams in a course has been associated with gender, racial, and socioeconomic inequities. We investigated whether offering students the opportunity to retake an exam makes high-stakes exams more equitable. Following the control value theory of achievement emotions, we hypothesized that exam retakes would increase students'…

Many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) community college students do not complete their degree, and these students are more likely to be women or in historically excluded racial or ethnic groups. In introductory courses, low grades can trigger this exodus. Implementation of high-impact study strategies could lead to increased…

We previously developed an online multiple-choice question authoring, learning, and self-assessment tool that we termed Quizzical. Here we report statistical analyses over two consecutive years of Quizzical use in a large sophomore-level introductory molecular biology course. Students were required to author two questions during the term and were…

Practice exams are a type of deliberate practice that have been shown to improve student course performance. Deliberate practice differs from other types of practice, because it is targeted, mentally challenging, can be repeated, and requires feedback. Providing frequent instructor feedback to students, particularly in large classes, can be…

Certain racial and ethnic groups, individuals with disabilities, and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds remain underrepresented (UR) in the biomedical sciences. This underrepresentation becomes more extreme at each higher education stage. To support UR scholars during the critical transition from baccalaureate to PhD, we established an…