Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) and inquiry-based curricula both expose students to the scientific process. CUREs additionally engage students in novel and scientifically relevant research, with the intention of providing an "authentic" research experience. However, we have little understanding of which course…

Most of the available information on studying under the challenging conditions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes a variety of aspects on how to digitalize the whole teaching process. Thus, several useful and potentially game-changing strategies have been reported recently. In contrast to the digitalization of teaching, in this…

Background: In the United States, students of color are more likely to receive disciplinary exclusion compared with their White peers. The racial disproportionality in exclusionary school discipline (e.g., office discipline referrals and suspension) marginalizes students from nondominant communities and further aggravates inequalities in academic,…

The school, being the second home of pupils, is the second major force in the formation of the pupils' moral structure. It should be the crucial partner of the home in tempering the character of the youth and children with unbending quality, especially in values formation. In this case, it is necessary to evaluate the current status of values…

As community colleges are increasingly offering distance education courses, it is of great interest to examine student performance specifically in science courses. The objective of this study was to examine the student success and retention rates in anatomy courses that were offered face-to-face (F2F) compared to hybrid offerings. In the F2F…

The growing adoption of active learning techniques in physics courses requires that students productively engage in collaboration with their peers. Although studies in physics education research (PER) have addressed aspects of group work, the problem persists of how to engage students in collaborative work with appropriate self-awareness, adequate…

We described and ran a lesson plan for a build-your-own visible-range spectrophotometer undergraduate project as inspired by the research of Bougot-Robin, Imperial College London. Students were required to improve a basic Raspberry Pi spectrophotometer design and evaluate their improvements. Students learned firsthand how to manage instrumental…

Engineering design courses are particularly challenging to deliver in online or distance modalities because of the hands-on, collaborative nature of the design process and the need for physical resources and work spaces. In this work, we describe how we rapidly transformed two design courses in the middle two years of the biomedical engineering…

A two-part experiment using bubble rafts to analyze amorphous structures is presented. In the first part, the distinctions between crystalline and vitreous structures are examined. In the second part, the interface between crystalline and amorphous regions is considered. Bubble rafts are easy to produce and provide excellent analogy to recent…

Enzyme kinetics is an essential part of a chemistry curriculum, especially for students interested in biomedical research or in health care fields. Though the concept is routinely performed in undergraduate chemistry/biochemistry classrooms using other spectroscopic methods, we provide an optimized approach that uses a real-time monitoring of the…

The present work describes an undergraduate laboratory exercise for improving understanding of fundamental phenomena in cooling crystallization. The exercise of nucleation and crystal growth kinetics supports learning of theories and models presented in lectures and calculation exercises. The teaching methodology incorporates precepts the…

Magnetic stirrers and hot plates are key components of science laboratories. However, these are not readily available in many developing countries due to their high cost. This article describes the design of a low-cost magnetic stirrer with hot plate from recycled materials. Some of the materials used are neodymium magnets and CPU fans from…

A multistep synthesis of 10-ethyl flavin was developed as an organic chemistry laboratory experiment for upper-division undergraduate students. Students synthesize 10-ethyl flavin as a bright yellow solid via a five-step sequence. The experiment introduces students to various hands-on experimental organic synthetic techniques, such as column…

A simple and inexpensive method of monitoring the movement of an isolated frog heart provides comparable results to those obtained with a force transducer. A commercially available photoresistor is integrated into a Wheatstone bridge circuit, and the output signal is interfaced directly with a recording device. An excised, beating frog heart is…

Two introductory organic chemistry laboratory experiments are described based on the Diels-Alder reaction of 2,3,4,5-tetraphenylcyclopentadienone, which is synthesized prior to or in a one-pot reaction, with styrene. Students are presented with three possible products, the "endo" and "exo" diastereomers and the decarbonylated…