Education Commons^™

Student Perceptions Of An Inquiry‐Based Molecular Biology Lecture And Lab Following A Mid‐Semester Transition To Online Teaching, Jeremy L. Hsu, Melissa Rowland-Goldsmith

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

The transition to online learning in spring 2020 was abrupt for both students and instructors. While many instructors moved to asynchronous classes, some institutions relied more heavily on synchronous online courses. Here, we evaluate student perceptions of an inquiry‐based molecular biology lecture and lab course following this transition by comparing student survey responses from spring 2019, when the lecture and lab were fully in person, to spring 2020, when the lecture and lab started in person before transitioning to a synchronous online format. Students were asked to identify the main factors that supported their learning in lecture and lab, characterize …

Assessing Differences Between Three Virtual General Chemistry Experiments And Similar Hands-On Experiments, Cory Hensen, Gosia Glinowiecka-Cox, Jack Barbera

Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

To date the efficacy of virtual experiments is not well understood. To better understand what differences may exist between a hands-on learning environment and a virtual learning environment, three experiments were chosen for investigation. For each experiment, approximately half of the students completed a hands-on version of the experiment and the other half completed a virtual version. After completing the given experiment, students were compared on: their ability to meet the learning objectives for that experiment, their responses to six affective scales, and their grade on a laboratory report. Differences were found on four learning objectives. Two of these learning …

Smaller Classes Promote Equitable Student Participation In Stem, Cissy J. Ballen, Stepfanie M. Aguillon, Azza Awwad, Anne E. Bjune, Daniel Challou, Abby Grace Drake, Michelle Driessen, Aziza Ellozy, Vivian E. Ferry, Emma E. Goldberg, William Harcombe, Steve Jensen, Christian Jørgensen, Zoe Koth, Suzanne Mcgaugh, Caroline Mitry, Bryan Mosher, Hoda Mostafa, Renee H. Petipas, Paula A.G. Soneral, Shana Watters, Deena Wassenberg, Stacey L. Weiss, Azariah Yonas, Kelly R. Zamudio, Sehoya Cotner

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

As science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms in higher education transition from lecturing to active learning, the frequency of student interactions in class increases. Previous research documents a gender bias in participation, with women participating less than would be expected on the basis of their numeric proportions. In the present study, we asked which attributes of the learning environment contribute to decreased female participation: The abundance of in-class interactions, the diversity of interactions, the proportion of women in class, the instructor's gender, the class size, and whether the course targeted lower division (first and second year) or upper division …

Student Perceptions Of Reasons For Lecture And Active Learning, Calan Koch

Honors Theses

With perceived student resistance to active learning in the classroom, instructors are hesitant to implement such methods into their classroom structure despite how effective they may be. This research seeks to understand student perceptions related to the transition to higher prevalence of active learning techniques. We aimed to find answers to how students perceive the ideal classroom to be structured, what reasons they perceive for lecture and active learning components, and possible explanations to concerns of groupwork during class time. We analyzed 64 interviews with undergraduate biology students at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln, developed coding rubrics from commonly found …

How Songbirds Learn To Sing Provides Suggestions For Designing Team Projects For Computing Courses, Ashwin Satyanarayana, Radhika Natarajan, Lior Baron

Publications and Research

Understanding how our brain works and how we learn is perhaps one of the greatest challenges facing twenty-first computer science. Songbirds are good candidates for trying to unravel some of this mystery. Over the last decade, a large amount of research has been made to better understand how songbirds learn complex songs. The Canary (Serinus canaria) and the Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata) have been widely used bird models to study these brain and behavior relationships. Like songbirds, we humans are vocal and social learners. In such learners, the development of communication is initially steered by social interactions with adult tutors. …

Flipping The Flipped: The Co-Creational Classroom, Vuk Uskoković

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

The flip teaching model is being increasingly adopted by higher education institutions as an active learning alternative to traditional lecturing. However, the flip model shares a number of critical premises with the classical didactics. The further flips of the flip are thus advocated and the fear of returning the method to its initial state, prior to the flip, via such flips of the flipped dispelled. Proposed here is a seminal variation to the flip model based on the active involvement of students in searching, finding, selecting, and assembling knowledge from various literature sources into the learning material for the entire …

Updated Guidelines, Updated Curriculum: The Gaise College Report And Introductory Statistics For The Modern Student, Beverly Wood, Megan Mocko, Michelle Everson, Nicholas J. Horton, Paul Velleman

Publications

Since the 2005 American Statistical Association's (ASA) endorsement of the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report, changes in the statistics field and statistics education have had a major impact on the teaching and learning of statistics. We now live in a world where "Statistics - the science of learning from data - is the fastest-growing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) undergraduate degree in the United States," according to the ASA, and where many jobs demand an understanding of how to explore and make sense of data. In light of these new reports and other …

Building Data And Information Literacy In The Undergraduate Chemistry Curriculum, Yasmeen Shorish, Barbara A. Reisner

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry - Faculty Scholarship

The Literature and Seminar sequence at James Madison University has been used to develop the chemistry information literacy skills of chemistry majors for over four decades. These courses have been continually updated to emphasize information literacy skills for the twenty-first century. This chapter describes the methods that have been developed to improve chemical, data and general information literacy at a large, public, primarily undergraduate institution. The focus of the first semester course, described in this chapter, is on skill building rather than teaching specific resources. It is a model of integration and collaboration between chemistry faculty and chemistry librarians. Changes …

The Relationship Between The Use Of Academic Text Talk And The Comprehension Of Scientific Academic Language For Diverse Second Graders, Peggy Lee Mandel

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Changing demographics impact our schools as children come from more linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. The various social, cultural, and economic backgrounds of the students affect their early language learning experiences which expose them to the academic language needed to succeed in school. Teachers can help students acquire academic language by introducing words that are within their Zone of Proximal Development and increasing exposure to and use of academic language. This study investigated the effects of increasing structured activities for students to orally interact with informational text on their scientific academic language development and comprehension of expository text.

The Academic …

Integrating Movement And Science To Promote Physical Activity And Academic Performance In Middle School Children, Kevin E. Finn, Kyle Mcinnis

Health Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Recommendations from leading U.S. health agencies concerned with reducing childhood obesity call for increased physical activity during school and afterschool environments. Methods: We developed the Active Science curriculum, which is a variety of activity-based lessons (e.g., nature hike, dance class, walk at local park, treadmill at local YMCA) and incorporated them into traditional science classes and after school programs for middle school children in a low-income, ethnically diverse community. Following the activity experiments, students and teachers uploaded data from devices to an interactive website that provided inquiry-based exploratory learning of science content. Results: Physical activity results showed that the …

Assessing Intrinsic Values Of A Lecture-Free High School Science Education For Collegiate Science Work: A Case Study, Christopher Dorais

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

This case study examined the efficacy of the individualized instruction teaching methodology as it was applied within high school science classes. Also examined was how individualized instruction at the high school level prepared students to do collegiate science level work.

Effects Of Simulations On The Learning Of Pharmacokinetic Concepts, Reza Mehvar

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Objective: Although the use of computer simulations in pharmacokinetics courses is not new, the data on the effects of simulation on student learning are scarce. The objective of this study was to design and evaluate the use of Web-based simulations on the learning of pharmacokinetic concepts by doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students.

Method: Six online modules were designed to allow the instructor and students to use “what-if” scenarios for understanding the effects of various dosage regimens and/or pharmacokinetic parameters on the plasma concentration-time courses of drugs. The designed modules were intravenous and oral pharmacokinetic concepts, bioavailability, intravenous infusion, …

Biological Olympiads In The Ussr, Vyacheslav Dushenkov

Publications and Research

Biological Olympiads are the sort of intellectual competition widely spread nowadays, especially among high school students. Olympiads, often an integral part of the curriculum, stimulate the pupils' interest in acquiring knowledge and help to evaluate the level of their knowledge. Biological Olympiads in this country differ greatly from the science Olympiad in the USA. First of all, they include only biological material and can be compared only with USA Science Olympiad events such as "A is for Anatomy," "Bio-Process Lab," "Designer Genes" or "Don't Bug Me." Secondly, it is a personal competition with no official teams. Current Olympiads start at …