Teaching-focused professional development (PD) programs offered at institutions of higher education (IHEs) are uniquely positioned to be levers of change that improve the quality of undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in ways that broaden participation in STEM education, workforce development, and…

Funding for community colleges varies significantly, even within the same state. Several factors account for these differences, including more generous funding for smaller institutions to compensate for their higher costs per student, unequal local funding from property tax revenues, and political forces. In theory, this variation could lead to…

Metacognition is an important skill for undergraduate chemistry students, but there has been scant research investigating chemistry instructors' perspectives of metacognition and the development of their students' metacognition. Since undergraduate instructors have a wide influence over what happens in their courses, it is crucial to investigate…

Preparing to become a music teacher educator is a complex process and one component of this process should be learning to model, demonstrate, and teach assessment practices to preservice music educators. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to discover how, and to what extent, music teacher educators (MTEs) are educated about…

Despite the growing integration of social media in their personal and professional lives, many faculty remain uncertain about its application to the classroom. One barrier for the adoption of social media as a learning tool is continued uncertainty about effective practices and successful use cases. Anchored in a specific course implementation and…

Over the past several decades, numerous reports have been published advocating for changes to undergraduate science education. These national calls inspired the formation of the National Academies Summer Institutes on Undergraduate Education in Biology (SI), a group of regional workshops to help faculty members learn and implement interactive…

Technology & engineering teacher preparation programs at colleges and universities in the United States have been in a state of decline since the 1970's. In the fall of 2013 a study was conducted to compare the required curricula of the 24 undergraduate programs that maintain enrollment of 20 students or more in order to determine what a…

Standardized assessment tests that allow researchers to compare the performance of students under various curricula are highly desirable. There are several research-based conceptual tests that serve as instruments to assess and identify students' difficulties in lower-division courses. At the upper-division level assessing students' difficulties…

The Dirac delta function is a standard mathematical tool that appears repeatedly in the undergraduate physics curriculum in multiple topical areas including electrostatics, and quantum mechanics. While Dirac delta functions are often introduced in order to simplify a problem mathematically, students still struggle to manipulate and interpret them.…

Through the transformation of undergraduate STEM courses, the Colorado Learning Assistant Program recruits and prepares talented STEM majors for careers in teaching by providing them with early, sustained teaching experiences. The research reported here compares teaching practices of K-12 teachers who served as learning assistants (LAs) as…

In response to calls for reform in undergraduate biology education, we conducted research examining how varying active-learning strategies impacted students' conceptual understanding, attitudes, and motivation in two sections of a large-lecture introductory cell and molecular biology course. Using a quasi-experimental design, we collected…

This paper reports the findings of a case study that examined the use of digital information resources in an undergraduate geography class. The study assumed a contextual approach and focused on the use of visual and multimedia resources in specific class contexts. The distribution of resources in the class observed for the study varied and…

Authentic scientific data, when richly contextualized, can provide the basis for compelling learning experiences. Many undergraduate students either do not have access to primary data, or if they do, the data are so abstract that student engagement is limited. Here, we describe contextual information and data-rich, student-centered activities we…

Undergraduate science education curricula are traditionally composed of didactic instruction with a small number of laboratory courses that provide introductory training in research techniques. Research on learning methodologies suggests this model is relatively ineffective, whereas participation in independent research projects promotes enhanced…

This report presents findings from the annual tuition and fee survey of public two- and four-year colleges and universities in the state of Colorado. It presents the survey findings in a comparative summary format. The report shows that all governing boards complied with all the policies set forth by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.…