Journal of College Science Teaching—January/February 2020

Journal Article

Confusing Science Vocabulary: When Negative Is Positive!

By Mark Milanick

Journal Article

Student-Constructed Weather Instruments Facilitate Scientific Inquiry

Students in introductory college science courses often have a simplified understanding of the scientific method. To introduce students to the complexity of the scientific process and the value of empirical observations, I implemented a semesterlong...

By Cindy Shellito

Postsecondary

Journal Article

Evaluating Information: The Impact of Major, Class Standing, and Experience With Primary Literature

Social media platforms and other internet sites may propagate inaccurate or misleading information. This misinformation encourages speculation, rumors, and mistrust in established science. In the current study, we attempted to determine whether bio...

By Shawn Stover and Michelle Mabry

Postsecondary

Journal Article

A Team-Taught Interdisciplinary First-Year Seminar With a Focus on Blood

First-Year Seminars (FYS) offer a unique mode of introducing college students to new topics, research practices, and approaches to learning that they may not have been exposed to in high school. In this article, we outline the successes and challen...

By Adele J. Wolfson and Justin Armstrong

Postsecondary

Journal Article

A Learning Tool for Chemistry and Health Professions Students: Mnemonics for Writing Net Ionic Equations

Chemical mnemonic devices have been designed to aid students in understanding chemical concepts in previous years. This has been done for concepts such as oxyanions, ozonolysis, tautomerization mechanisms in organic chemistry, and writing reactions o...

By Angela L. Mahaffey

Postsecondary Chemistry Teaching Strategies

Journal Article

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: Using Team-Based Learning in the Science Classroom

With an overwhelming amount of research and a demand for collaborative learning in the classroom, teachers are tackling challenges at all educational levels that often accompany the social aspects of group work. Team-Based Learning (TBL) is an inst...

By Virginia J. Moore, Elizabeth Mitchell Prewitt, Amber Jean Carpenter-McCullough, and Brooke A. Whitworth

Postsecondary

Journal Article

An Introvert’s Perspective: Analyzing the Impact of Active Learning on Multiple Levels of Class Social Personalities in an Upper Level Biology Course

With calls to reassess higher education teaching methods, active learning practices have quickly become a popular alternative to traditional lectures, especially in STEM courses that traditionally rely heavily on large-lecture formats. In this rega...

By William C. Beckerson, Jennifer O. Anderson, John D. Perpich , and Debbie Yoder-Himes

Postsecondary

Journal Article

Clickers Are Not Enough: Results of a Decade-Long Study Investigating Instructional Strategies in Chemistry

Studies on the effectiveness of clickers in undergraduate chemistry courses are mixed, and there is disagreement on how to effectively leverage clickers to improve student learning performance. To fill a gap in the research, we analyzed three diffe...

By David J. Weiss, Patrick McGuire, Wendi Clouse, and Raphael Sandoval

Postsecondary

Journal Article

Building First-Year Science Writing Skills With an Embedded Writing Instruction Program

An important foundational skill developed in an undergraduate science program is the ability to find, critically evaluate, and communicate scientific information. Effective science communication depends on good writing; therefore, we leveraged stud...

By David Dansereau, L. E. Carmichael, and Brian Hotson

Postsecondary