We present the analysis of the planetarium usage survey (PLUS), a two-part, mixed-methods initial study investigating planetarium use in the U.S. by undergraduate learners. Seventy-seven planetariums situated on college or university campuses within the U.S. completed an online survey during the fall of 2018 with 11 of those participating in…

Scientific disciplines spanning biology, biochemistry, and biophysics involve the study of proteins and their functions. Visualization of protein structures represents a barrier to education and research in these disciplines for students who are blind or visually impaired. Here, we present a software plugin for readily producing variable-height…

Understanding macromolecular structures is essential for biology education. Augmented reality (AR) applications have shown promise in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, but are not widely used for protein visualization. While there are some tools for AR protein visualization, none of them are accessible to the…

A pretest-training-posttest design assessed whether training to improve spatial skills also improved mathematics performance in elementary-aged children. First grade students (mean age = 7 years, n = 134) and sixth grade students (mean age = 12 years, n = 124) completed training in 1 of 2 spatial skills-spatial visualization or form…

The University of Maryland--College Park initiated the First-Year Innovation & Research Experience (FIRE) in 2014 to provide authentic faculty-led research experiences, mentorship, and accelerated opportunity for first-year students from a wide range of academic backgrounds. To annually provide more than 600 new FIRE students with an authentic…

Mother tongue education is accomplished with four basic language skills. These skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. One of the basic skills that increase the vocabulary of the individual is the reading skill. Understanding and comprehension are important in this skill. Understanding of reading is a complicated process. There…

Despite the plethora of research in the field of mental rotation, researchers are still divided over a range of related issues, particularly the processes involved in coping with mental rotation tasks. This field of research, for the most part, is descriptive rather than interpretative, leading to the absence of a theoretical framework to enable…

In several sporting events, the winner is chosen on the basis of a subjective score. These sports include gymnastics, ice skating, and diving. Unlike for other subjectively judged sports, diving competitions consist of multiple rounds in quick succession on the same apparatus. These multiple rounds lead to an extra layer of complexity in the data,…

We report our qualitative study of twenty-four students enrolled in the second-semester of a second-year undergraduate (sophomore-level) organic chemistry course, Organic Two. We asked the research participants to propose the product and electron-pushing mechanism of elementary mechanistic steps in the absence and presence of the corresponding…

When students of the of the physical sciences transition from school to university, they discover that knowledge of calculus is as vital as arithmetic, and that there is precious little useful information written without calculus. However, the lack of calculus in pre-university physics studies persists, especially in its application to the…

A study of transition metals includes studying the physical and chemical properties of first-row d block metals in the Periodic Table. The curriculum on transition metals emphasizes learning the physical and chemical properties and is a lecture-based strategy that is predominately employed by teachers to transfer the knowledge on properties of the…

Measurement of mental rotation presents a serious challenge to cognitive researchers owing to the lack of a single comprehensive measure that can be applied across the developing age groups. Objective of the present study was to develop and validate a new measure of mental rotation for preadolescent and adolescent age groups. Items were…

The novel coronavirus has forced the world to interact with data visualizations in order to make decisions at the individual level that have, sometimes, grave consequences. As a result, the lack of statistical literacy among the general public, as well as organizations that have a responsibility to share accurate, clear, and timely information…

Improving reading comprehension for middle school students with disabilities and others who struggle with reading, referred to here as striving readers, is challenging. Formal reading instruction typically shifts from skills acquisition to application in middle and high school, providing inadequate support in the skills for comprehension (Chall,…

Aim/Purpose: This paper aims to evaluate the influence of an augmented reality mobile application on improving secondary students' visualization and comprehension of geometric concepts. Background: The study involved developing an AR app named Geometria to enhance geometry education. Methodology: In a specialized boarding school in Kokshetau,…