Women continue to be underrepresented in undergraduate STEM majors. Prior studies identify women's sense of belonging, or the extent to which one feels like an accepted member of an academic community, as a key contributor to their decisions to stick with or leave their STEM majors. Women's social connectedness and perceived competence have been…

In spring 2018, an inquiry-oriented differential equations course was offered at the Lebanese American University. This paper highlights students' comprehension of some qualitative aspects of differential equations, namely their understanding of the equations and their solutions. It also explores the students' success in moving between the…

Research suggests learning assistant (LA) programs can be a change lever to support the institutionalization of active learning in postsecondary education. Some research suggests LAs offer unique benefits for STEM courses, independent from other change levers, but more research needs to be done to understand how LAs support active learning…

The recent push toward active learning -- engaging students in the learning process -- is meant to benefit students. Yet there is still much to learn about students' perceptions of this phenomenon. We share results from an interview study of students' perceptions of features of two active learning models institutionalized at a large…

Over the last decade, there has been a national effort to prepare a more diverse student population for success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers. While there are a variety of best teaching practices in undergraduate STEM education, student engagement has been widely used to improve student learning. Specifically,…

Purpose: Creating suitable learning conditions in university classrooms continues to be a topical issue in higher education. The above means that a continued search for innovative teaching and learning strategies in universities remains a priority issue. The study therefore investigated conditions that facilitate the effective implementation of…

College calculus plays an important role in STEM students' degree and career aspirations. One of the key factors considered in assessing a student's ability to be successful in calculus is their proficiency in topics from prior mathematics courses such as algebra and precalculus. This study set out to examine the impact of students' precalculus…

This paper reports a study of university students' experiences of learning mathematics in an introductory differential equations course that takes an inquiry approach to learning and teaching. The students are on a trajectory leading toward a bachelor's degree in mathematics to be followed by a year-long teacher education credential program. The…

Despite the standardization of calculus education as a Calculus and Analytic Geometry course after the 1950s, curriculum updates have been slow to penetrate the undergraduate mathematics classroom practice, taking decades to manifest. Common struggles with the teaching and learning of calculus, such as relying on a procedural understanding of…

This research paper explores the integration of ChatGPT as a tool for interactive learning of numerical methods in a differential equations (DEs) course. DE course is crucial for engineering students to model real-world phenomena. However, many DE courses focus only on analytical solutions and neglect important numerical solutions. To overcome…

Nationwide, many students fail to complete the key mathematics courses that are required for most STEM majors, including Precalculus. This paper describes the rationale, implementation, and impact of the redesign of Precalculus at one regional west coast institution. Prior to the redesign, pass rates in Precalculus were modest (75.8% of all…

A central goal of introductory physics for the life sciences (IPLS) is to prepare students to use physics to model and analyze biological situations, a skill of increasing importance for their future studies and careers. Here we report our findings on life science students' ability to carry out a sophisticated biological modeling task at the end…

Even though K-12 mathematics educators have embraced the role of graphing calculators and computers, student use of technology in tertiary mathematics has been slow to implement in the USA context. Enter March 2020, a global health crisis, and the shift to online and remote learning. The immediate and dramatic cessation of in-person modes of…

A study was conducted considering a mathematics learning center as a figured world, that is, as a social space that is treated as if individuals within the space share certain meanings about the space and interactions within it (Holland et al., 1998) from the perspective of the undergraduate peer tutors employed in it (for the larger study, see…

The Mathematics Department at Cornell University has recently secured a grant from the University to implement systemic change in how we teach courses that reach students at critical transition points in their mathematical development. In this article, we report on the changes made to our large multi-section first-semester calculus course in order…