Background: A teaching method to improve students' ability to communicate ideas in genetics across the macro-micro levels of organisation was investigated in this study. Purpose: It is designed to help students deconstruct the level of organisation of each tier of a genetic diagram, as the symbols used in such diagrams (i.e. lines and letters) can…

The opportunities for outreach activities for professionals and academics in food science are extensive, as too are the range of participants' experience levels and platforms for delivery. Here, we present a set of activities that are readily adaptable for a range of students (ages 10 to 18) in multiple platforms (demonstration table and hands-on…

This article describes a five-day online energy module, developed by the Concord Consortium (an educational research and development organization) in which students compare the effects of various energy sources on air quality, water quality, and land use. The module's interactive models explore hydraulic fracturing, real-world data on energy…

First-year undergraduate classes present challenges in teaching as they usually have high student enrolment numbers and students studying across a range of higher education programs that require a fundamental understanding of knowledge that is not perceived in their area of study. This provides a challenge in terms of engaging and maintaining…

This paper describes a non-classical logic course primarily indicated for graduate students in electrical engineering and energy engineering. The content of this course is based on the vision that it is not enough for a student to indefinitely accumulate knowledge; it is necessary to explore all the occasions to update, deepen, and enrich that…

A new team learning assessment process was designed and tested in a first-year university physics laboratory class. The assessment process was designed to provide a strong incentive for students to cooperate and feel responsible for each other's learning and fostering a sense of collaboration rather than competition. Specifically, the new…

Meta-analysis can provide a robust description of the impact of educational reforms and also offer an opportunity to explore the conditions where such reforms are more or less effective. This article describes a meta-analysis on the impact of cooperative learning on students' chemistry understanding. Modifiers in the meta-analysis are purposefully…

The design of assessment tools is critical to accurately evaluate students' understanding of chemistry. Although extensive research has been conducted on various aspects of assessment tool design, few studies in chemistry have focused on the impact of the order in which questions are presented to students on the measurement of students'…

In this qualitative study, we examined how a group of seventeen first semester General Chemistry students responded when they were shown contrasting molecular animations of a reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction between solid copper and aqueous silver nitrate for which they first viewed a video of the actual experiment. The animations contrasted…

Undergraduate biology majors require biological literacy about the critical and dynamic relationships between plants and ecosystems and the effect human-made processes have on these systems. To support students in understanding systems relationships, we redesigned an undergraduate botany course using an ecological framework and embedded systems…

Volatile compounds from polymeric materials such as weatherstripping were identified by solid-phase microextraction (SPME), a solvent-free analytical method, coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). These compounds, originating from additives and fillers used in weatherstripping processing, were mostly polycyclic aromatic…

We conducted a study to examine how a writing-to-learn assignment influenced student learning of polymer behavior. In particular, we examined the role of specific content and a rhetorical framework as well as a structured writing process including peer review and revision. The student-generated writing was analyzed via a content-directed rubric.…

We present a collection of hands-on experiments that collectively teach precollege students fundamental concepts of polymer synthesis and characterization. These interactive experiments are performed annually as part of an all-day outreach event for high school students that can inform the development of ongoing polymer education efforts in a…

We used the Rule Space Model, a cognitive diagnostic model, to measure the learning progression for thermochemistry for senior high school students. We extracted five attributes and proposed their hierarchical relationships to model the construct of thermochemistry at four levels using a hypothesized learning progression. For this study, we…

In this paper we present a learning design approach that leverages perspective-taking to help students learn about complex systems. We define perspective-taking as projecting one's identity onto external entities (both animate and inanimate) in an effort to predict and anticipate events based on ecological cues, to automatically sense the…