Low-stakes testing, or quizzing, is a formative assessment tool often used to structure course work. After students complete a quiz, instructors commonly encourage them to use those quizzes again to retest themselves near exam time (i.e., delayed re-quizzing). In this study, we examine student use of online, ungraded practice quizzes that are…

The Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) and the Science Writing and Workshop Template (SWWT) are two active learning instructional approaches which combine writing, inquiry, collaboration, and reflection, elements which have been associated with critical thinking development. In this study, we used a quasi-experimental pretest-post-test design to…

Evidence-based teaching (EBT), such as active learning and formative assessment, benefits student learning but is not present in many college science classrooms. The choices faculty make about how to teach their science courses are influenced by their personal beliefs and motivations, as well as their departmental structures and institutional…

Smartphone technology has the potential to make heritage science accessible to museums, individual collectors, and educators. Infrared reflectography (IRR) is a nondestructive analysis method used by museums to gain information about the provenance, history, and aging of artworks. This paper introduces a highly accessible, inexpensive apparatus…

With the rapidly growing field of nanotechnology, there has been a pressing need to teach non-science undergraduate majors how to critically interpret science in popular media and news sources. The present work introduces students to chemistry concepts through the lens of relatable nanotechnology applications, including electronics, medicine,…

Spatial intelligence is an essential skill commonly used within various fields of science. Students with low spatial abilities frequently struggle to identify, retrieve, and apply key complex abstract information presented as multiple representations to actual three-dimensional natural materials and phenomena. Spatial ability may be considered a…

Organic Chemistry is considered by many to be the quintessential "weeder course", widely identified in the premed and STEM persistence literature as a gatekeeper to students interested in STEM or health fields (Barr, Gonzalez, & Wanat, 2008; Lovecchio & Dundes, 2002). There has therefore been considerable interest in determining…

The aim of the research was the analysis of the problem dealing with solving of six Force concept inventory tasks by first-year university students using obtained eye-tracking data. Some characteristics like attention maps and sequences of fixations provide a deeper insight into the students' approaches to the tasks verifying their conceptual…

According to the principle of equivalence, it is impossible to distinguish between gravity and inertial forces that a noninertial observer experiences in his own frame of reference. For example, let's consider an elevator in space that is being accelerated in one direction. An observer inside it would feel as if there was gravity force pulling him…

This column shares reflections or thoughtful opinions on issues of broad interest to the community. This month's issue discusses the value of traditional lecturing.

This study developed an online observable augmented reality dynamics experimental system that can be used in the current COVID-19 pandemic, where face-to-face experiments are difficult to conduct. The developed system enables the broadcast of mass point and rigid body measurements using an online depth camera, and remote observation using mobile…

We evaluated an emerging smartphone application, iNaturalist, to increase taxonomic identification and engage first-year undergraduate biology majors in outdoor laboratories of aquatic ecosystems (stream and lake ecology) and terrestrial ecosystems (tree and leaf litter ecology). Labs involved identifying organisms using both standard field guides…

Active learning yields better learning outcomes than traditional, lecture-based teaching. Common approaches in large lecture courses are activating elements during the lectures and warm-up activities using online learning environments. However, implementing warm-up exercises, on which students work on by themselves makes formative feedback…

Here we share results from a larger study of professional development (PD) provided to faculty at Research I Urban University (RIUU), where STEM faculty modeled active learning strategies and provided ready-to-use STEM materials to teaching staff. Data from 94 STEM faculty, who comprised 27% of the total participants (N = 340), demonstrated a…

In the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, staff and students at universities worldwide were forced to swiftly adapt to distance learning in order to continue with tertiary education. One of the main challenges we encountered during this period was a marked disconnect between staff and students, leading to lower motivation…