Large enrollments in undergraduate courses pose several teaching and learning challenges that impact students' learning experience and performance. Implementing co-learning activities in tutorials of large courses can help mitigate these challenges and improve the learning environment. One type of collaborative learning activity that has become…

Citizen science is a research collaboration between scientists and volunteers who provide data for education, conservation, and environmental protection. Volunteers, often the locals in the area, provide data on species occurrence while researchers perform distribution mapping or other data analysis. Social networking sites including Facebook,…

In a three-year, practice-based, creative research project, the team designed a video game for undergraduate biology students that aimed to find the right balance between educational content and entertainment. The project involved 7 faculty members and 14 undergraduate students from biological science, design, computer science, and music. This…

Research has focused on identifying and overcoming determinants that impede widespread adoption of instructional interventions, with little empirical examination of postsecondary educators' perceptions about these interventions. We explored postsecondary biology educators' sensemaking of education improvement interventions targeting undergraduate…

We describe interim results of an ongoing longitudinal pedagogical study investigating the efficacy of the Honours Integrated Science Program (iSci). We describe the pedagogical methods we use to prompt research skill development in a model from instructor-dependence to independent original research. We also describe a tool we use to help students…

Professors endorse a symbiotic relationship between research and teaching, but empirical evidence supporting this relationship is inconsistent. Many studies operationalized research and teaching too narrowly to detect the believed relationship. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with 27 chemistry professors from a large…

Transitioning to university can be a daunting endeavour, with student success dependent on a myriad of effects (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Understanding how to navigate university systems, who to meet, how to get help, how to study, and what goals to set can be hard to grasp (Valle et al., 2003). We provide an overview of the new…

The use of online collaborative assignments (OCAs) between two flipped organic chemistry classrooms, one in Canada and the other in the United States, was examined for impact on learners. The intervention was designed to support content mastery, aid in increasing students' communication skills through chemistry drawing and verbalization,…

Senior undergraduate research projects are important components of most undergraduate science degrees. The delivery of such projects in a distance education format is challenging. Athabasca University (AU) science project courses allow distance education students to complete research project courses by working with research supervisors in their…

For the past 40 years, there has been apprehension in North American society, and particularly in the scientific community, concerning the decline of interest and enrollment in science degree programs at the post-secondary level. This trend has proven very difficult to reverse. The purpose of this study was to explore why students at an Atlantic…

This study examines the effectiveness of flipped classrooms in chemistry, and identifies relationships as a major factor impacting the success of flipped instruction methods. Examination of student interview data reveals factors that affect the development of peer-peer, peer-peer leader, and peer-expert relationships in firstyear general chemistry…

We have examined the teaching practices of faculty members who adopted research-based instructional strategies (RBIS) as part of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Of the 70 that adopted such strategies with the support of the CWSEI program, only one subsequently stopped using these…

The flipped classroom is a relatively new approach to undergraduate teaching in science. This approach repurposes class time to focus on application and discussion; the acquisition of basic concepts and principles is done on the students' own time before class. While current flipped classroom research has focused on student preferences and…

Technology-rich student-centered classrooms such as SCALE-UP and TEAL are designed to actively engage students. We examine what happens when the design of the classroom (conventional or teacher-centered versus student-centered classroom spaces) is consistent or inconsistent with the teacher's epistemic beliefs about learning and teaching…

An important part of training the next generation of physicians is ensuring that they are exposed to the integral role that research plays in improving medical treatment. However, medical students often do not have sufficient time to be trained to carry out any projects in biomedical and clinical research. Many medical students also fail to…