Creating instructional activities and assessments that align with expected learning outcomes can improve student learning. Communicating learning expectations to students may lead to better student performance and an increase in student perceptions of the fairness of the assessment tools. One tool for communicating learning outcomes is the…

Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing rather than a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. Using the theoretical lens of epistemological framing, we applied previously developed frames to seek an underlying structure to the long lists of published…

In this paper, we analyse the conceptual and procedural difficulties that university students of the Primary Education Degree have about respiratory physiology. To carry out this study a questionnaire was designed in order to assess the knowledge of these future teachers before and after studying the first subject of natural sciences of the…

This study investigates the knowledge acquisition of biology and physics freshmen students with special regard to differences between high school (HS) high performing and low performing students. Our study is based on a prior knowledge model, which describes explicit knowledge as a composite of four knowledge types: knowledge of facts, knowledge…

Technological innovation in science provides complementary tools for exploring new teaching strategies within a pedagogical framework that promotes interaction between the teacher and the learner. This work is based on the implementation of a computer application modeling crystallographic material structures, in order to identify and study the…

This study examines scientific practices associated with scientific writing in organic chemistry in China. Although there is rapidly growing literature on the features and strategies of scientific writing, further research in this area is needed to recognize and treat scientific writing as a social endeavor to evaluate it in a more comprehensive…

Team based learning (TBL) is a time tested teaching-learning (T-L) tool involving collaborative learning but has hardly been tested for teaching clinical biochemistry to undergraduate medical students. The present study was designed to (a) compare problem solving skills of first year MBBS students after attending a TBL session on 'organ function…

Environmental pollution is both a worldwide and a local issue, and microplastic pollution in particular is receiving increased attention due to its prevalence and bioaccumulation potential affecting the food chain. This laboratory experiment uses current, research-based methods such that the students can determine the extent of microplastic…

Currently, it is taken for granted that teachers have to take into account the conceptions in order to achieve some efficient learning, the latter are generally resistant and may hinder the learning. Studies have shown that learning amounts to make conceptions evolve which play a determining role in the appropriation of scientific concepts such as…

Despite the need for public understanding about groundwater resources, groundwater is among those topics that instructors most struggle to teach at pre-college and college levels. Although constructivist theories suggest student-held conceptions can be used as teaching tools for active learning, there remains a question about how to draw out and…

KinSim is a research-grade, interactive, user-friendly, open-source, and visual software for kinetics modeling of environmental chemistry and other applications. Students without any computer-programming background and limited knowledge of environmental chemistry can use KinSim, which also includes multiple features and functionality dedicated to…

In response to STEM education reform efforts, many instructors have incorporated active learning into their courses. However, the relationship between instructor justification to students about the use of active learning and student perception of why instructors use active learning is largely unknown. To investigate instructor active learning…

Audiovisual recordings of lectures are available to many students in all disciplines. The use of lecture recordings has been studied extensively, but it is still not clear how, or how much, they are actually used. Previous analysis of their use has been based on either survey data or computer logs of access. In the latter case, measurements of…

To remedy the difficulties encountered by Moroccan students in geometrical optics during the transition from secondary to higher education and for an efficient education system, we propose this study to investigate the causes of these difficulties as well as their impact on the quality of the secondary/university transition, and come up with a…

The indispensability and vast career possibilities associated with Chemistry notwithstanding, there is a palpable growing decline enrollment in Chemistry in Nigerian universities, particularly the private universities. The paper interrogated the teaching and learning of Chemistry in Nigerian private universities with a view to re-awakening the…