A growing body of research documents the positive outcomes of research experiences for undergraduates, including increased persistence in science. Study of undergraduate lab learning experiences has demonstrated that the design of the experience influences the extent to which students report ownership of the project and that project ownership is…

When the authors were first invited to write these columns, the editors felt it would be an interesting way to give the readers of "CBE - Life Sciences Education" an agency's-eye view of its concerns, workings, and accomplishments. This column is written with that charge in mind. It is intended to inform the community about outreach…

This paper explores what happens in the encounters between presentations of "basic facts" about the human genitals and 15-year-old students during a biology lesson in a Swedish secondary school. In this paper, meaning making was approached as relational, context-dependent and continually transacted. For this reason the analysis was…

Because of the multimodal nature of learning, doing and reporting science, it is important that students learn how to interpret, construct, relate and translate scientific representations or, in other words, to develop representational competence. Explicit instruction about multimodal representations is needed to foster students'…

Cellular respiration, the central component of cellular metabolism, can be a difficult concept for many students to fully understand. In this interrupted, problem-based case study, students explore the purpose of cellular respiration as they play the role of medical examiner, analyzing autopsy evidence to determine the mysterious cause of death…

For biologists, a proper understanding of evolutionary processes is fundamentally important. However, undergraduate biology students often struggle to understand evolutionary processes, replacing factual knowledge with misconceptions on the subject. Classroom discussions can be effective active learning tools used to address these misconceptions…

The AAAS Vision and Change report (2011) recommends incorporating student research experiences into the biology curriculum at the undergraduate level. This article describes, in detail, how "Zea mays" (corn) cultivars were used as a model for a hypothesis-driven short-term research project in an introductory biology course at a small…

Despite the teaching of biological evolution in the classroom for decades, the learning of concepts related to evolution continue to pose difficulties for students, due to their inability to see the relevance of evolution their everyday experiences. In this study, we report the results from questionnaires composed of twelve multiple-choice items…

Fatigue is a common phenomenon in our society, and it can have a major impact on an individual's performance and wellbeing. Parents and teachers have long believed that children with hearing loss (CHL) are at increased risk for fatigue. One could easily speculate that toward the end of a school day, CHL may be "physically and mentally…

In this case study, we describe our proposed solution to help students 'see' and understand sub-cellular structures in a three-dimensional virtual learning environment and the challenges of implementing this innovation in Singapore schools. The teaching of molecular biology in Singapore suffers from student disengagement and lack of suitable…

Interdisciplinary undergraduate research experiences often require students to work in teams with other students and researchers from different disciplines, creating a need for development of new skills in interdisciplinary collaboration. In this paper, we describe our unique efforts to mentor participants in developing these skills during our…

With the development of new sequencing and bioinformatics technologies, concepts relating to personal genomics play an increasingly important role in our society. To promote interest and understanding of sequencing and bioinformatics in the high school classroom, we developed and implemented a laboratory-based teaching module called "The…

This mixed method study explored Christian teachers' beliefs in religious schools on evolution, their attitudes toward evolution, and their perceptions on the effect of those beliefs on the teaching of evolutionary content. Teachers (N = 52) from Association for Christian Schools International (ACSI) accredited schools in California and Hawaii…

At the present stage of the development of education of persons with disabilities ways of enhancing the effectiveness of training students with intellectual disabilities undergo active research. One means of improving the efficiency and further upgrading of teaching methods is information technology. The article gives an example of improvement of…

This study explores how web-based scaffolding tools provide instructional support while implementing a socio-scientific inquiry (SSI) unit in a science classroom. This case study focused on how students used web-based scaffolding tools during SSI activities, and how students perceived the SSI unit and the scaffolding tools embedded in the SSI…