In order to meet changing curricular and societal needs, a three-phase system and synchronous motor laboratory experience for sophomore-level students in a wide variety of engineering majors was designed, implemented, and assessed. The experiment is unusual in its early placement in the curriculum, and in that it focuses primarily on basic…

In this mixed-method study, the secondary schools in Western Visayas, Philippines offering special science program (SSP) were assessed as basis for delivery enhancement. The SSP along student-related factors and the extent of implementation in the areas of curriculum and instruction, laboratory facilities, and administration in terms of the…

Online education has been steadily growing during the last decade. This growth has mainly taken place in the non-laboratory science fields. This essay describes some of the best practices to increase and maintain student retention, increase student engagement and increase graduation rates for college running online laboratory science courses. This…

Metacognition can be described as an internal conversation that seeks to answer the questions, "how much do I really know about what I am learning" and, "how am I monitoring what I am learning?" Metacognitive regulation skills are critical to meaningful learning because they facilitate the abilities to recognize the times when…

A process for analyzing log files collected from open-ended learning environments is developed and tested on a virtual lab problem involving reaction stoichiometry. The process utilizes a set of visualization tools that, by grouping student actions in a hierarchical manner, helps experts make sense of the linear list of student actions recorded in…

Congruency effects were examined using a manual response version of the Stroop task in which the relationship between the colour word and its hue on incongruent trials was either kept constant or varied randomly across different pairings within the stimulus set. Congruency effects were increased in the condition where the incongruent hue-word…

Many students are entering Computer Science education with limited exposure to operating systems and applications other than those produced by Apple or Microsoft. This gap in familiarity with the Open Source community can quickly be bridged with a simple exercise that can also be used to strengthen two other important current computing concepts,…

A systematic approach to develop the teaching of instrumental analytical chemistry is discussed, as well as a conceptual framework for organizing and executing lectures and a laboratory course. Three main components are used in this course: theoretical knowledge developed in the classroom, simulations via a virtual laboratory, and practical…

Several principles of green chemistry are introduced through this experiment designed for use in the undergraduate analytical chemistry laboratory. An established experiment of liquid CO2 extraction of D-limonene has been adapted to include a quantitative analysis by gas chromatography. This facilitates drop-in incorporation of an exciting…

A first-year undergraduate course that introduces students to chemistry through a conceptually detailed description of quantum mechanics is outlined. Quantization as arising from the confinement of a particle is presented and these ideas are used to introduce the reasons behind resonance, molecular orbital theory, degeneracy of electronic states,…

This article describes a case study involving an assistive device that aided a student with low vision registered in the introductory physics course at Trent University in the fall of 2009. His Snellen visual acuity fluctuated significantly, with an average acuity of about 20/400. This low acuity presented obvious difficulties for him with the…

Rats can be used as a model organism to teach physiological concepts in a laboratory setting. This article describes a two-part laboratory that introduces students to hypothesis testing, experimental design, the appropriate use of controls and surgical techniques. Students perform both a castration and sham-control surgery on male rats and test…

The study explores if established support devices for paper-pencil problem solving, namely worked examples and incremental scaffolds, are applicable to laboratory tasks. N?=?173 grade eight students solved in dyads a physics laboratory task in one of three conditions. In condition A (unguided problem solving), students were asked to determine the…

The use of boric acid in the Kjeldahl determination of nitrogen is a variant of the original method widely applied in many laboratories all over the world. Its use is recommended by control organizations such as ISO, IDF, and EPA because it yields reliable and accurate results. However, the chemical principles the method is based on are not…

This article describes a computational project designed for undergraduate students as an introduction to mathematical modeling. Students use an ordinary differential equation to describe fish weight and assume the instantaneous growth rate depends on the concentration of dissolved oxygen. Published laboratory experiments suggest that continuous…