The primary objective of the current project was to convey authentic science to students in out-of-school student laboratories. High school students have diverse and partially wrong concepts of scientists' work. To convey more realistic concepts, we developed videos of scientists working on relevant and up to date scientific topics. These videos,…

Practical work is ubiquitous in science education, but its enactment is challenging in remote teaching contexts. The situation was exacerbated due to a moratorium on contact classes induced by the COVID-19 pandemic that necessitated strict health protocols. Home-based practical work (HBPW) became a significant option as academic institutions…

In 2018, to help undergraduate medical students strengthen their self-learning and scientific research skills, we introduced an instructional model that combined literature-based learning with experimental design. We tested this model on the molecular biology class at Tongji University. In the first step of the model, a topic is chosen, and…

In today's science classrooms, with the integration of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), teachers are encouraged to guide instruction through real-world phenomena and promote critical thinking through inquiry-based learning that helps students learn the reasoning and practical skills of scientists, rather than just rote memorization of…

This paper explores the experience of how Chinese international doctoral students develop critical thinking. Narrative interviews are conducted. Narrative thematic analysis is adopted. Four big themes are generated, which are understanding of critical thinking, comparison and contrasts, factors contributing to development of critical thinking and…

The North Carolina legislature has mandated establishing school/university partnership lab schools. Partnership schools may help to drive school improvement efforts; however, educators have been forced to adopt multiple initiatives aimed at the improvement of K-12 education and teacher preparation. The likelihood of teachers and professors yet…

Remote access technology in STEM education fills dual roles as an educational tool to deliver science education (Educational Technology) and as a means to teach about technology itself (Technology Education). A five-lesson sequence was introduced to 11 and 12-year-old students at an urban school. The lesson sequences were inquiry-based, hands-on,…

The continued and substantial increase in technological resources generates a new concept of education that utilizes online resources -- blended learning. Blended learning represents a combination of face-to-face experiences and online learning experiences. The advantage of this multiple-method approach is that it offers the opportunity to achieve…

Delivering Anatomy & Physiology (A&P) labs online became necessary in the spring of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For four semesters (Summer 2020 through Summer 2021), our A&P1 and A&P2 labs were instructed in a virtual format. Each lab session included a one-hour synchronous session led by teaching assistants followed by…

Reflections on the efficacy of pedagogical changes and practices and their effect on student performance are often hindered by incomplete data, small sample sizes, and the confounding variables of multiple instructors and teaching sites. Observations from such retrospective analyses, however, are highly sought after by instructors and…

Writing a lab report can be an opportunity for students to engage in scientific thinking. Yet students' lab reports often do not exhibit evidence of such engagement. Students' writing can appear focused on "filling in" required components and reporting on predetermined conclusions. We conducted a design experiment in an introductory…

This article seeks to provide researchers and practitioners in laboratory education, particularly those involved in the curriculum design and implementation of teaching laboratories at university level, with a conceptual framework and a working model for an integrated assessment of learning domains, by attending to a more holistic approach to…

The M@t.abel2020 project supported Italian teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic period, proposing activities based on the mathematics laboratory teaching method which are suitable for distance learning situations. The project resulted in the establishment of an online community of 1,500 teachers. In this paper we present an exploratory study…

An online section of a face-to-face (F2F) undergraduate (bachelor's level) anatomy course with a prosection laboratory was offered in 2013-2014. Lectures for F2F students (353) were broadcast to online students (138) using Blackboard Collaborate (BBC) virtual classroom. Online laboratories were offered using BBC and three-dimensional (3D)…

Let us consider a classical high school exercise concerning two weights on a pulley and a string, illustrated in Fig. 1(a). A system like this is called an Atwood's machine and was invented by George Atwood in 1784 as a laboratory experiment to verify the mechanical laws of motion with constant acceleration. Nowadays, Atwood's machine is used for…