Background: Practice tests have been shown to be an effective means to foster long-term retention in higher education, at least compared to restudying (i.e., the testing effect). Objective: The present study replicated and extended prior research by examining whether and to what extent the positive effects of testing on long-term retention in a…

In recent years, COVID-19 policy measures massively affected university teaching. Seeking an effective and viable way to transform their lecture material into asynchronous online settings, many lecturers relied on prerecorded video lectures. Whereas researchers in fact recommend implementing prompts to ensure students process those video lectures…

Most chemistry students struggle with interpreting and understanding NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectra and the general concepts of NMR spectroscopy. NMR spectroscopy seems to be difficult to both teach and learn. Therefore, the corresponding courses should be investigated in more detail. We conducted a survey with N = 39 German university…

Students' usage of lecture recordings can be characterised by usage frequency, repetitiveness and selectivity in watching, lecture attendance, and social context and location in which students watch the lecture recordings. At the University of Münster (Germany), the lecture recording service was evaluated over three semesters. The data were…

In recent studies, test-score increases have been shown in rule-based intelligence test tasks, such as number series, after watching a corresponding video tutorial. An open question remains regarding the mechanisms involved. Specifically, taking notes to describe the relations between numbers might be linked to test scores, and is hypothesized to…

In times of PodCast and MOOCs, a rebirth of the "classical" academic lecture in the form of modern technology-mediated communication as video-conserve can be observed. Current technological developments in the field of audiovisual media reduce the distance between a recorded action and its reception. By using high immersive technologies…

A digital lecture with motivating experiments--how can this be done in practice? This question shall be answered in the context of a case report from the field of material science. A digital experimental lecture as a substitute for a lecture with student experiments was evaluated by students to provide information on whether an adequate substitute…

The concepts of the Coriolis and the centrifugal force are essential in various scientific fields and they are standard components of introductory physics lectures. In this paper, we explore how students understand and apply concepts of rotating frames of reference in the context of an example lecture demonstration experiment. We found in a…

This article proposes a study design developed to disentangle the objective characteristics of a learning situation from individuals' subjective perceptions of that situation. The term objective characteristics refers to the agreement across students, whereas subjective perceptions refers to inter-individual heterogeneity. We describe a novel…

Validity is an important issue when measuring teaching quality using student evaluations. This study examined the effects of psychology students' subjective clarity about study contents and their prior interest in the subject as variables possibly biasing the evaluations of psychology courses. German students (N = 292) evaluated lectures and…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the principles underlying the successful implementation of a lecture recording service in higher education. Design/methodology/approach: The paper qualitatively reviews the practices and experiences of several years of automated lecture recording at a medium-sized university in Germany. Findings: The paper…

Digitalization of teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education has gained increasing attention in research in the recent years. While previous research investigated issues of effectiveness, course attendance, and course evaluation from a long-term perspective, the current COVID-19 pandemic forced higher education institutions to…

Recently, medical students' scientific thinking skills have been identified as an important issue in medical education. Scientific thinking cannot be imparted in conventional lectures, but rather requires actively involving students. We modified a practical course in physiology. A study was designed to test whether the new course fosters…

A simple, reliable, and cost-effective experiment is presented in which students synthesized citrate-capped gold nanoparticles (GNPs), functionalized them with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), and transferred the PEG-GNPs from water to the organic phase dichloromethane. The experiment introduces students to nanotechnology with foci on important…

In this article, we discuss the dynamics that led to viewing of 18 five-minute videos, created as part of a business dynamics course and made freely available on Internet. Over a period of five years, the videos were watched 2,740 times in 80 countries. The goal of our research was to understand what dynamics drove the viewership. We collected…