The landscape of undergraduate biology education has been shaped by decades of reform efforts calling for instruction to integrate core concepts and scientific skills as a means of helping students become proficient in the discipline. Assessments can be used to make inferences about how these reform efforts have translated into changes in…

Students who experience research as undergraduates tend to remain in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Since course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) are often expensive to implement, we developed a relatively inexpensive first-semester research course for majors entitled "Freshman Research in…

The latest development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), particularly ChatGPT, has drawn the attention of educational researchers and practitioners. We have witnessed many innovative uses of ChatGPT in STEM classrooms. However, studies regarding students' perceptions of ChatGPT as a virtual tutoring tool in STEM education are rare.…

During the pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), a paper analytical device (PAD) was proposed as a tool for remote laboratory classes for undergraduate chemistry to teach calibration curve concepts. For this experiment, students were taught how to prepare a PAD, calibrate standard solutions, construct a calibration curve, and treat data…

We describe an iodometric titration method for the determination of ascorbic acid using a microfluidic paper-based analytical device([mu]PAD). The ascorbic acid was detected by measuring the length of the blue band formed in a straight paper channel delimited by wax. This analytical method was designed as a laboratory experiment for under…

Our goal as educators should be to help our students become well positioned to achieve future success. To develop effective strategies for accomplishing this objective, we must first understand the root causes of success. Thus, to best serve undergraduate students who are taking organic chemistry courses, we must understand the attributes that…

Previous studies have shown the important role of different representations in the teaching and learning of physics. In this study, we used eye tracking to investigate the effect of different representations on the process of answering conceptual questions. We compared students' scores and eye-tracking measures on isomorphic questions which…

We calculate the frequency of matter-wave of electrons orbiting the hydrogen nucleus at the ground state. It is the same as the value of light frequency corresponding to the ground state from the Rydberg's formula. The result will stimulate students' interest to further understand the mechanisms of quantum theory.

A flexible and modular peptide modeling set was designed using freely available software tools. The set consists of space-filling models of all 20 naturally occurring amino acid side chains and a modular kit for constructing peptides employing C-alpha carbons and amide bond groups. Connectors that allow free rotation about phi and psi angles on…

A detailed investigation of student conceptions of quantum phenomena is needed, both to characterize student understanding of quantum concepts and to inform how we might teach quantum mechanics (QM). In this vein, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 35 students who majored in physics and received university-level QM…

Agent-oriented pedagogies have been used in teaching concepts related to complex systems dynamics. However, little research has systematically explored the role of a strong agency-oriented focus on understanding of complex, dynamic ecological systems. This study analyzed seventh graders' (n = 216) explanations of a complex ecological scenario. The…

If a body is in equilibrium under the action of three non-parallel coplanar forces, the forces must be concurrent (Muncaster 1993 "A Level Physics" 4th edn (Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes) p 44, 45, 49; Goh 2018 "Phys. Teach." 56 384). It is easy to show that they are concurrent when the forces meet at a point in the body…

Energy is an important crosscutting concept in all science disciplines, and energy conservation is widely regarded as one of the most important principles in physics. Over the years, numerous graphical representations have been proposed that allow learners of physics to visualize energy states and dynamics in a particular situation. Each diagram…

The sensation of weightlessness is common to an astronaut in a spaceship orbiting Earth and to a person aboard a freely falling elevator. This paper presents a detailed treatment of this commonality by showing that a spaceship orbiting Earth is in permanent free fall toward the planet, appropriate for use in the introductory classroom.

Symmetry and invariance play a fundamental role in modern physics and related disciplines, and students entering a STEM field need practice with symmetry-based arguments as part of the preparation for their future careers. We refer to symmetry based solutions as those that either make use of the existing geometric symmetry in a problem to simplify…