Prior to the recycling process, raising awareness of plastic waste impact, e.g., polluting oceans worldwide, is undoubtedly a first attempt to tackle this pandemic environmental issue. With this in mind, the presented practical session is an effort to entice an interdisciplinary audience of science undergraduates toward a sustainable future. The…

Throughout the general chemistry lab curriculum, a common shortcoming is the way in which students measure, record, and manipulate quantitative data. From initial measurements with different digital and analog instruments to proper conversions, calculations, and comparisons, students are often expected to be experts before they have been taught…

An open-source electrochemistry simulation package has been developed that simulates the electrode processes of four reaction mechanisms and two typical electroanalysis techniques: cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. Unlike other open-source simulation software, this package balances the features with ease of learning and implementation and…

Three experiments were designed to test whether experimentally created ad hoc associative networks evoke false memories. We used the DRM (Deese, Roediger, McDermott) paradigm with lists of ad hoc categories composed of exemplars aggregated toward specific goals (e.g., going for a picnic) that do not share any consistent set of features. Experiment…

Centrifugation is a major unit operation in chemical and biotechnology industries. Here we present a simple, hands-on laboratory experiment to teach the basic principles of centrifugation and to explore the shear effects of centrifugation using bacterial cells as model particles. This experiment provides training in the use of a bench-top…

The literature on human and animal learning suggests that individuals attend to and act on cues differently based on the order in which they were learned. Recent studies have proposed that one specific type of learning outcome, the highlighting effect, can serve as a framework for understanding a number of early cognitive milestones. However,…

The Teacher as Partner is an approach to inquiry-based science teaching, where the teacher works as the students' partner. Prior research suggests that it offers an opportunity to model inquiry actions and voice their often tacit rationale. It also enables learners to witness the difficulties and fallibility that even experts can experience, which…

Instruction in analog electronics is an integral component of many physics and engineering programs, and is typically covered in courses beyond the first year. While extensive research has been conducted on student understanding of introductory electric circuits, to date there has been relatively little research on student learning of analog…

Homes have remarkable possibilities to act as science learning environments for young children (3 - 6 years old). This qualitative case study investigated what kind of support parents need to do online science activities with their children at home. Data consisted of parent's theme interviews (n=7). As a main result, a model of parents' need for…

This mixed method study investigated changes in 3rd year Bachelor of Education students' attitudes towards chemistry after learning interventions with virtual chemistry simulations. After participant students identified certain concepts from their 3rd year chemistry module as being abstract and not easily comprehensible, these concepts were…

This research aims to develop an instructional model using advanced laboratory equipment (ALE) based on collective intelligence attributes that can be applied to the scientifically-gifted students. The developed GI-ALE model is defined by introducing the principles of the group investigation (GI) model to the existing ALE instructional model based…

A hands-on educational module was created to illustrate the scope of chemical engineering. Students are taught fundamental concepts that they integrate in a laboratory experience designing and fabricating a 'plant-on-a-chip' microfluidic device capable of continuous processing of reactive flows. Students gain insight into chemical engineering…

Although environmental radioactivity is all around us, the collective public imagination often associates a negative feeling to this natural phenomenon. To increase the familiarity with this phenomenon we have designed, implemented, and tested an interdisciplinary educational activity for pre-collegiate students in which nuclear engineering and…

This study is investigating the student-teachers' conception of static electricity in Rwandan teacher training colleges. The study used a pre- and post-intervention design, where two groups of students were randomly assigned in two groups. Along a period of four weeks, one group was taught using the traditional method (TRAD) while another using…

"Active learning" has been used to describe classrooms that have varied widely with respect to instructional topics, age of learners, and the procedures used to operationalize the general notion of the term. In most cases, the specific variant of active learning under investigation has been more effective than the particular control used…