A version of the classic rotationally resolved infrared (IR) spectrum of a diatomic molecule experiment has been developed using the POGIL framework to more fully engage students in the collection, modeling, analysis, and interpretation of the data. An analysis of the experimental protocol reveals that the POGIL approach actively engages students…

To best prepare students for the real-world research environment, key skills, including experimental design, data analysis, communication of results, and critical thinking, should be key components of undergraduate science courses. Furthermore, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on in-person teaching has resulted in a need to develop courses that…

The study examines the effects of different questioning strategies on elementary school students regarding scientific knowledge, views of scientific inquiry, and scientific inquiry skills during scientific inquiry video learning. A quasi-experimental design was adopted involving 78 sixth-grade Taiwanese students from three classes. The three…

Flame Emission Spectroscopy (FES) is a powerful analytical technique widely used for identifying and quantifying elements in various samples. In this laboratory experiment, undergraduate students were introduced to FES and its significance in analytical chemistry. The experiment aimed to provide students with hands-on experience in constructing…

The purpose of this article is to describe the possibilities of using worksheets in the teaching of lipids and proteins. The worksheet includes a concept map, suggestions for three safe experiments that can be performed with available household chemicals, and observation results. The worksheets were implemented into action research in two classes…

Reading and understanding scientific literature is an essential skill for any scientist to learn. While students' scientific literacy can be improved by reading research articles, an article's technical language and structure can hinder students' understanding of the scientific material. Furthermore, many students struggle with interpreting graphs…

Dimensionality reduction techniques are essential in analyzing large 'omics' datasets in biochemistry and molecular biology. Principal component analysis, t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding, and uniform manifold approximation and projection are commonly used for data visualization. However, these methods can be challenging for students…

Making sense of data is fundamental to science. Yet, the form in which data are represented can make their interpretation challenging for students. We introduce an activity that transformed a data table into an embodied artifact. The activity helped 8th grade students interpret the data to find that cold water warmed "fast-then-slow," in…

As many studies focus on improving scientific literacy skills in students, there are still many gaps, thus an appropriate learning innovations are needed to get maximum results. This study aimed to evaluate the implementation of project-based blended learning in enhancing students' scientific literacy skills at the university. The experimental…

Background: New technology and increased collaboration have revolutionized how scientists work with data. This creates a need to identify new aspects of working with scientific data that are important for K-12 students to learn. Purpose: To address this need, we conducted a study with practicing scientists and K-12 science teachers. The purpose of…

An important objective of any analytical chemistry course is for students to generate and interpret data from the analysis of complex, real-world samples in order to assess the effectiveness of the analysis method, including the calibration. In this laboratory exercise, students directly compare calibration methods (external standards and standard…

To develop competency in science practices, such as data analysis and interpretation, chemistry learners must develop an understanding of what makes an analysis and interpretation "good" (i.e., the criteria for success). One way that individuals extract the criteria for success in a novel situation is through making social comparisons,…

Assessing scientific argumentation is one of main challenges in science education. Constructed-response (CR) items can be used to measure the coherence of student ideas and inform science instruction on argumentation. Published research on automated scoring of CR items has been conducted mostly in English writing, rarely in other languages. The…

The need for geoscience students to develop a quantitative skillset is ever increasing. However, this can be difficult to implement in university-style lecture courses in a way that is both manageable for the instructor and does not involve lengthy, potentially repetitive, question sheets for the students. Here, a method for teaching dimensional…

School science is often very different from "real world" science. One important difference, and possibly the main one, is that in school science the relationships between variables have often been sanitized -- essentially "cleaned up" -- so that there is very little (and often no) variation in the data from the relationship…