In 1752, the American polymath Benjamin Franklin supposedly flew a kite near the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to confirm that lightning had the same properties of common electricity that electrical machines produced and Leyden jars served to store. Illustrations, vignettes and paintings frequently portray the famous experiment, showing…

The expectations within higher education to improve online STEM courses have continued to increase. The pressure to do so particularly pertains to the lower-level introductory courses that act as gatekeeping courses to various STEM-related majors. Rather than working alone to improve their courses, more instructors for these courses pair with the…

Recently, scholars have suggested a co-design collaboration with instructors and students to effectively implement formative assessment (FA) practices because it ensures a high-quality design that considers users' needs, values, and goals in a specific learning context. This study examines the effect of co-designed FA practices, in which…

Contribution: The evaluation of analog-to-digital conversion methods constitutes a key component of an Instrumentation course. This study introduces an affordable educational platform based on Arduino UNO board designed for teaching analog-to-digital conversion concepts, supported by virtual instruments (VIs). Background: ADCs are electronic…

There have been growing calls for inquiry, a practice-oriented way of engaging students in authentic scientific work, yet research has shown some challenges that might impede inquiry practices in educational settings. In this study, we proposed an approach that blends educational gaming with physical experiments. We developed an educational game,…

We report on a study of the effects of laboratory activities that model fictitious laws of physics in a virtual reality environment on (i) students' epistemology about the role of experimental physics in class and in the world; (ii) students' self-efficacy; and (iii) the quality of student engagement with the lab activities. We create…

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an inquiry-based laboratory for sophomore-level organic chemistry into a mostly cookbook, existing laboratory curriculum. For the laboratory, students were required to generate their own procedures and use their own recorded data from prior laboratory assignments to identify an…

Despite standardized engineering and administrative controls, accidents persist in chemistry laboratories owing to the inherent complexity of the experiments. As a result, there is an increasing need to strengthen safety culture, which is built on a safety mindset and refers to an institution's knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of laboratory…

The authors present two classroom experiments on technology licensing. The first classroom experiment introduces the concept of royalty stacking. Students learn that noncooperative pricing of royalties for complementary intellectual property rights leads to a double-marginalization effect. Cooperation solves the problem and is welfare-improving.…

In the virtual laboratory learning process, students' scientific abilities in solving a problem are very important to explore. This study aims to develop classroom-based authentic assessment instruments through virtual laboratory learning in chemistry to see an increase in students' scientific performance. The research was conducted at a public…

The purpose of this research is to improve and evaluate a different approach to develop the lab application skills of the physics pre-service teachers in the courses of Secondary Physics Experimental Design (SPED), School Experience (SE) and Teaching Practices (TP). In this context, action research was used to achieve the purpose of the research.…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Measurement uncertainty is a critical feature of experimental research in the physical sciences, and the concepts and practices surrounding measurement uncertainty are important components of physics lab courses. However, there has not…

Laboratory course activities often focus on "cookbook style," so their activities have not yet integrated with scientific thinking as an essential aspect. In this research, the laboratory experience of microbial analysis techniques was redesigned using alternative inquiry to involve students in isolating and characterising yeast to make…

This paper describes a student-centered approach to teaching and learning physics in a high school classroom. The teacher designs and uses a 5E learning cycle to teach series and parallel electric circuits. This article provides an example of the implementation of 5E model for a physics lesson to address three-dimensional learning-science and…

Molecules and Computer: Chemistry Calculations in Class (MC[superscript 4]) is a computational laboratory intended for final-year high school or undergraduate students. The topic is the antioxidant potential of anthocyanidins, which is chemically related to their radical scavenging action via the mechanism of hydrogen atom transfer (HAT). This…