First- and final-year undergraduate students have unique transition issues. To support both the transition of first-year students into the program, and the transition of third-year students out of the program and into the workforce or further study, a face-to-face peer mentoring program was embedded into the first-year psychology curricula at RMIT…

The National Science Foundation's GK-12 program provides a unique opportunity for STEM collaboration between the K-12 classroom and university research. This partnership benefits students through experiential learning, exposure to research, exceptional mentorship, and preparation for postsecondary education. Additionally, researchers gain…

Twenty-eight freshmen majoring in biology and/or chemistry in an Arab college in Israel, were given a pre-test and a post-test in which they had to identify the control group and design a controlled experiment. During the course an intervention was used. Science was taught by inquiry while using strategies that promote higher-order thinking skills…

The association between the observable physical world and the mathematical models used in theoretical physics to describe this world is examined. Such models will frequently exhibit solutions that are "unexpected," in the sense that they describe physical situations which are different from that which the physicist may initially have had in mind…

This article reports on a one-semester Advanced Cell Biology course that endeavors to bridge the gap between gaining basic textbook knowledge about cell biology and learning to think and work as a researcher. The key elements of this course are 1) learning to work with primary articles in order to get acquainted with the field of choice, to learn…

Regardless of the increased interest in technological innovation in universities, relatively little is known about the technology developed by academic scientists. Long-term analyses of researchers' technological contribution are notably missing. This paper examines university-based technology in Finland during the period 1900-85. The focus is on…

Education has been recognized as an important tool for achieving a nation's goals, vision and objectives. The quality of Nigerian universities has been and still is an issue of concern among stakeholders due to the challenges posed by globalization and the need for continued scientific and technological advancement. Over the years, this concern…

Attempts to bring authentic science into the K-16 classroom have led to the use of sociocultural theories of learning, particularly apprenticeship, to frame science education research. Science educators have brought apprenticeship to science classrooms and have brought students to research laboratories in order to gauge its benefits. The…

This article describes how a university and a museum have worked together to create a "How science works" workshop entitled "What's in our water?" The workshop teaches students about the continuing pollution from a disused coal mine, how the pollution is cleaned up using a state-of-the-art treatment works and how scientists…

After spending $133-million to build a new award-winning technological gem of a power plant, officials at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst are expecting their fuel bills to rise by $7-million a year. And yet they are very proud of the accomplishment. The reasons for the higher energy costs involve a complicated mix of technology,…

Technology has been widely involved in science research. Researchers are now applying it to science education in an attempt to bring students' science activities closer to authentic science activities. The present study synthesizes the research to discuss the development of technology-enhanced laboratories and how technology may contribute to…

A science communication project is described where undergraduates in groups interview postgraduate researchers about their research and the life of a researcher. Mutual benefits to undergraduates and researchers are described in terms of creativity, the research-teaching links agenda and employability. (Contains 3 tables.)

Notwithstanding criticisms and discussions on methodological grounds, much attention has been and still will be paid to university rankings for various reasons. The present paper uses published information of the 10 top-ranking universities of the world and demonstrates the problem of spurious precision. In view of the problem of measurement error…

Major changes in the governance of higher education and the public sciences have taken place over the past 40 or so years in many OECD countries. These have affected the nature of authority relationships governing research priorities and the evaluation of results. In particular, the increasing exogeneity, formalisation and substantive nature of…

Nowadays, outreach labs are important informal learning environments in science education. After summarizing research to goals outreach labs focus on, we describe our evidence-based gene technology lab as a model of a research-driven outreach program. Evaluation-based optimizations of hands-on teaching based on cognitive load theory (additional…