During the pandemic, the use of question pools for online testing was recommended to mitigate cheating, exposing multitudes of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students across the globe to this practice. Yet instructors may be unfamiliar with the ways that seemingly small changes between questions in a pool can expose…

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has forced schools and universities to close. Globally, education systems face unprecedented challenges, and learning management systems (LMS) are the only solution. The current study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a Blackboard collaborative breakout group on the cognitive achievement of physical education…

Majority of the students regarded algebra as one of the difficult areas in mathematics. They even find difficulties in algebraic expressions. Thus, this investigation was conducted to identify common errors in algebraic expressions of the preservice teachers. A descriptive method of research was used to address the problems. The data were gathered…

A natural concern in the field of computer-supported collaborative learning is how participants in collaborative learning project attain individual deep understanding through pedagogical or technological support. This study explores such individual outcomes as influenced by designing a collaborative learning project supported with a diagram-based…

Research has shown that adults can engage in cognitive offloading, whereby internal processes are offloaded onto the environment to help task performance. Here, we investigate an application of this approach with children, in particular children with poor working memory. Participants were required to remember and recall sequences of colors by…

This paper examines how refugee youth strategically navigate learning during the first years of resettlement. Interweaving frameworks of youth agency and culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP), we investigate how refugees learn, how they perceive instruction in the U.S., and what they recommend teachers do to support them. Analysis of interview and…

In quantum mechanics, probability amplitudes are complex numbers and the relative phases between the terms in superposition states have measurable effects. This article describes an investigation into sophomore- and junior-level students' reasoning patterns in relating relative phases and real-world quantum phenomena. The investigation involved…

International large-scale assessments like international computer and information literacy study (ICILS) (Fraillon et al. in International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), 2015) provide important empirically-based knowledge through the proficiency scales, of what characterizes tasks at different difficulty levels,…

Practice problems and worked examples are both well-established teaching techniques. Research in math and physics suggests that having students study worked examples during their first contact with new material, instead of solving practice problems, can be beneficial to their subsequent performance, possibly due to the reduced cognitive load…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) require teachers to think very carefully about the structure of lessons, which content must be taught to allow students to achieve NGSS expectations, and how content is delivered. With the standards' focus on three-dimensional learning and the use of relevant phenomena, most teachers are urged to make…

This paper focuses on the procedure and results for analyzing text-difficulty in lower-secondary chemistry textbooks in the Czech Republic. The authors use established methodology for text-difficulty analysis by Nestler, adapted by Prucha and Pluskal by adding a second independent analyser to improve reliability. Some textbooks do not follow the…

Navigating scientific challenges, persevering through difficulties, and coping with failure are considered hallmarks of a successful scientist. However, relatively few studies investigate how undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students develop these skills and dispositions or how instructors can facilitate this…

Studies comparing the instructional effectiveness of dynamic versus static visualizations have produced mixed results. In this work, we investigated whether gender imbalance in the participant samples of these studies may have contributed to the mixed results. We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized experiments in which groups of students…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to review the issues and challenges associated with examining PhD theses in the modern, rapidly changing academic world. The PhD degree has been described as the "pinnacle of academic qualifications", but it is under threat in terms of the quality of supervision and the outcome of examinations. By…

Texting is a widespread mode of communication and libraries are experimenting with it to interact with users. This article presents the results of a study on virtual reference service. The authors seek to determine whether or not the texting service is filling a different information need than chat and email by examining the level of difficulty…