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The current conventional approach in teaching STEM seems inadequate; it is failing both the students and the work-force demands in several aspects. Perhaps it is succeeding in equipping students with information and facts but surely falls…
Educational technology has attained significant importance as a mechanism for supporting experiential learning of science concepts. However, the growth of this mechanism is limited by the significant time and technical expertise needed to…
Nanotechnology has emerged as a broad, exciting, yet ill-defined field of scientific research and technological innovation. There are important questions about the technology's potential economic, social, and environmental implications. We…
Mathematics is the language of science. Fluent and productive use of mathematics requires one to understand the meaning embodied in mathematical symbols, operators, syntax, etc., which can be a difficult task. For instance, in algebraic…
What if we take a broader view of what it means to run an education experiment? In this paper, we explore opportunities that arise when we think beyond the commonly-held notion that the purpose of an experiment is to either accept or reject…
Explainer videos are increasingly used to support science learning. While prior research has demonstrated their potential, studies have also identified limitations - particularly their tendency to foster an illusion of understanding, where…
The cyclic format of the undergraduate physics curriculum depends on students' ability to recall and utilize material covered in prior courses in order to reliably build on that knowledge in later courses. However, there is evidence to…
This study discusses the opportunity to integrate tinkering, a constructionist practice, into formal education, highlighting its potential and challenges. We propose a model through which teachers can blend the open exploratory nature of…
Environmental Education (EE) is vital for shaping citizens who understand and value sustainability as an epistemological and practical alternative to mitigate current environmental issues. This research was prompted by the exploration of…
Scientific research involves mathematical modelling in the context of an interactive balance between theory, experiment and computation. However, computational methods and tools are still far from being appropriately integrated in the high…
Whereas the research program of the measurement of scientific communications emerged in a context where the delineations among academia, government, and industry were institutionalized, the systemic development of these relations during the…
The physics community explores and explains the physical world through a blend of theoretical and experimental studies. The future of physics as a discipline depends on training of students in both the theoretical and experimental aspects…
For several years, students at an art college, working with NASA astronomers, have produced animations inspired by research on black holes, dark matter and more. They can be whimsical or poetic but still constrained by scientific rigour.…
The impact of inquiry-based instruction on the improvement of content knowledge of electricity and wave properties in two studies was the subject of this investigation. Groups of pre-college and undergraduate students performed a series of…
The flipped classroom model has been widely acknowledged as a practical pedagogical approach to enhancing student engagement and learning. However, it faces challenges such as improving student interaction with learning content and peers,…
We discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of a course for science undergraduates designed to help them develop an awareness and a deeper appreciation of the intellectual demands of physics teaching. The course focused on…
University courses in conceptual physics and astronomy typically serve as the terminal science experience for non-science majors. Significant work has gone into developing research-verified pedagogical methods for the algebra- and…
A considerable share of the literature on physics education and on education more broadly focuses on the principles which should guide the design of courses and of classroom activities. In this short article I wish to place more attention…
Recent advances in our understanding of the Universe have revolutionized our view of its structure, composition and evolution. However, these new ideas have not necessarily been used to improve the teaching of introductory astronomy…
We have designed an introductory laboratory course that engaged first-year undergraduate students in two complementary types of iteration: (1) iterative improvement of experiments through cycles of modeling systems, designing experiments,…