Research and Teaching: Assessing and Refining Group Take-Home Exams as Authentic, Effective Learning Experiences

Journal Article | April 2015

The learning goals of a lower division honors course, Science as a Way of Knowing, include critical thinking, scientific literacy, quantitative reasoning, communication, and teamwork. To help students develop skills and…

Research and Teaching: Computational Methods in General Chemistry: Perceptions of Programming, Prior Experience, and Student Outcomes

Journal Article | December 2015

This article explores how integrating computational tools into a general chemistry laboratory course can influence student perceptions of programming and investigates relationships among student perceptions, prior…

Science Sampler: Fix the potholes! Helping students translate their interests and life experiences into scientific investigations

Journal Article | March 2010

One strategy for differentiating science instruction that shows promise is a shift toward valuing students’ questions and life experiences (Barton 1998; Upadhyay 2006). In this article, the authors present potential…

Combustion and Energy Transfer Experiments: A Laboratory Model for Linking Core Concepts Across the Science Curriculum

Journal Article | December 2006

Core concepts can be integrated throughout lower-division science and engineering courses by using a series of related, cross-referenced laboratory experiments. Starting with butane combustion in chemistry, we expanded…

How Does Undergraduate Research Experience Impact Career Trajectories and Level of Career Satisfaction: A Comparative Survey

Journal Article | August 2014

This article reports a comparison of results from a survey of participants in the University of Arizona Undergraduate Biology Research Program with those of a comparable group drawn from the college of medicine who did…

Thinking Outside the Kit: Building Preservice Science Teachers’ Inquiry Skills With an Experiment That Doesn’t Go as Planned

Journal Article | August 2010

Preservice preparation courses for elementary teachers of science can provide opportunities to build pedagogical content knowledge. One common concern of preservice teachers is how to cope with a preplanned lesson that…

A Cooperative Learning Approach to Teaching Introductory Biology: Experimenting with an Innovative Teaching Style at the University of California, Davis

Journal Article | February 1998

Why are students unable to make the transition from understanding concepts to applying them? It seems that the standard lecture format does not provide students with an opportunity to test comprehension of a subject.…

An Integrative Science Capstone Course: Western Washington University's Experiment in Investigative Science for Elementary Education Majors

Journal Article | August 1999

This article describes a course in experimental science for preservice elementary education students. Through “directed discovery,” students collaborate in developing and executing a plan to investigate water as a…