The fact that the future of a nation lies in the hands of its knowledgeable, technologically skilled, and civilized citizens is irrefutable. Secondary schools are primary centers for acquiring academic excellence as well as essential life skills. With each student being unique in his ability, learning styles, and social background, diverse…

Our Introduction to Research Methods course is a first-year majors course built around the idea of helping students learn to work like chemists, write like chemists, and think like chemists. We have developed this course as a hybrid hands-on/ lecture experience built around instrumentation use and report preparation. We take the product from one…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the implementation of case-based teaching and use of response technologies to graduate students in a food science course. The article focuses on teaching sensory science and sensometrics, presents several concrete examples used during the course, and discusses in each case some of the observed outcomes.…

In this study, the author examines the extent to which an interactive engagement approach can reduce the gender gap in senior secondary school (SSS) (age 16-18 years) students' learning outcomes in quantum physics. One hundred and twenty one (male = 65; female = 56) SSS 3 students participated in this study. They were randomly selected from two…

Dimensional analysis is traditionally one of the first topics covered in a general chemistry course. Chemists use dimensional analysis as a tool to keep track of units and guide them through calculations. Although unit conversions are taught in a variety of subjects over several grade levels, many students have not mastered this topic by the time…

Institutes of higher learning are tending to reduce the amount of face-to-face teaching that they offer, and particularly through the traditional pedagogical method of lecturing. There is ongoing debate about the educational value of lectures as a teaching approach, in terms of both whether they facilitate understanding of subject material and…

The authors investigated whether the amount of instructional guidance affects science learning and self-efficacy. Sixty 9- and 10-year-old children were randomly assigned to one of the following three instructional conditions: (a) guided instruction consisting of examples and student-generated explanations, (b) direct instruction consisting of a…

In large lecture courses, it can be challenging for instructors to address student misconceptions, supplement background knowledge, and identify ways to motivate the various interests of all students during the allotted class time. Instructors can harness instructional technology such as screencasts, recordings that capture audio narration along…

Describes a microcomputer-based software package developed at the University of Surrey for teaching digital signal processing to undergraduate science and engineering students. Menu-driven software capabilities are explained, including demonstration of qualitative concepts and experimentation with quantitative data, and examples are given of…