Scientific misinformation has reached alarming proportions. Here, we summarize a new expert report, Science Education in an Age of Misinformation, that outlines what science education can do to address this problem and, given the urgency, must do. Importantly, we highlight the significance of teaching how the social practices of science contribute to its trustworthiness and how students should evaluate second-hand claims reported in the media or on the internet. We focus on the concepts of epistemic dependence on experts, competent outsiders, credibility, expertise, consensus, deceptive tactics, and science media literacy.

Postsecondary science faculty face challenges in balancing the engagement of undergraduates while concomitantly ensuring knowledge is gained and retained, either in standard lectures or labs as well as in outdoor activities. Designing on-campus trails with interpretive signs may provide a unique avenue to inform students across majors of local biodiversity and tie in concepts related to ecology, organismal biology, and conservation. Here we evaluate the efficacy of course-specific interpretive signs deployed around a small on-campus natural area to engage first year students (N = 98). We assessed students’ overall engagement level and retention of information conveyed across specific signs via a student guided nature walk where students examined signs and answered both a pre and post activity survey, rated their favorite sign, and provided a short reflection feedback on this outdoor activity. Students’ responses indicated they both retained general information on specific signs, most notably regarding reptiles and what types of mammals are found around campus. Overall students rated this activity as engaging, with 87.7% combined agreeing or strongly agreeing that signs helped them learn about the biodiversity and ecosystems on campus.

Laboratory learning in the life sciences is historically centered around following recipe-like instructions to complete activities with defined outcomes. The American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Vision and Change report has called for a change in science teaching. The report emphasizes the importance of providing research experiences for students and the need to foster discovery, collaboration, and communication of science by students. In recent years, the course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) has been introduced into science pedagogy. CUREs provide authentic, inquiry-based research experiences to undergraduate students from all backgrounds. There is evidence that CUREs produce students who have more concrete science identities, improved interdisciplinary collaboration and communication skills, and better understanding of the process of doing science compared to traditional courses. Students who participate in CUREs may be more likely to continue in the sciences compared to students without an authentic research experience. CUREs are often offered as single courses. Multi-semester CUREs increase potential for undergraduate publication and presentation of their science and benefits faculty supporters and their institutions. CUREs have revolutionized laboratory learning in the life sciences. We offer a review of current literature on the benefits and limitations of CUREs.

Inoculation theory, which applies the biological concept of vaccination to misinformation, provides a range of ways to effectively build resilience against misinformation. In this article, we define and organize the various types of inoculation, which includes three delivery mechanisms that can be useful in the classroom—passive, active, and experiential. In passive inoculations, students passively receive inoculating messages while in active inoculations, students actively generate misinformation using misleading techniques. We introduce a new category of inoculation—experiential—which involves misleading students then debriefing them on how they were misled. We then describe how these three techniques were implemented in a general-education science class designed to teach critical thinking and science literacy. Through these activities, we illustrate how the different types of inoculation can be creatively combined to maximize student engagement and learning.

Clear, detailed instructional procedures have an important role to play in laboratory teaching, not only to produce consistent results, but to ensure safe practices. Student success in using these can be strengthened through the use of video resources. However, not all video content will have the same impact. Videos must have sufficient relevance and focus to connect with the user’s experience level. Achieving this target can be a challenge for a subject matter expert because they have come a long way from first learning the relevant lab skills. As a result, drawing on the fresh perspective of recent trainees to generate instructional video content can make a difference in the impactfulness of the final product. Their heightened awareness of new experiences can not only better focus the content on the most straightforward essentials, but also shape the content into a story-like format, thereby amplifying the power to connect with future users. In this paper we identify and explain elements that contribute to the development of robust student-generated video resources, including principles of cognition, instructional design, and social networking, and we demonstrate how key aspects of procedural communication can be applied in making and using instructional videos in academic teaching labs.

Although evidence exists that online education can result in comparable outcomes as the equivalent face-to-face (F2F) version, there is still a dearth in the literature. The objective of this pilot was to investigate differences in academic performance between students participating in the F2F versus online version of Nutrition 10, an introductory, college-level nutrition course. Students enrolled in Nutrition 10 (F2F) (n=907) and Nutrition 10V (virtual) (n=1,239) completed a 27-item nutrition knowledge questionnaire before (pre-) and after the class (post-) developed from the learning objectives (=0.92). Students that took the class, regardless of delivery method, improved nutrition knowledge (+6.9 points; p<0.01). In the F2F class, students exhibited a greater improvement in nutrition knowledge (+7.7 points; p<0.01) compared to the virtual class (+6.3 points; p<0.01). There were significant differences in grades based on the quarter the course was offered. Fall 2019 F2F students received a grade that was 2.9% greater than the virtual course (p<0.05), whereas Winter 2020 virtual students received a grade that was 1.2% greater than the F2F course (p<0.01). Although both F2F and online education share many similarities, there are still significant differences that remain between the two modalities.