Successfully creating and implementing interdisciplinary curricula in introductory science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses is challenging, but doing so is increasingly more important as current problems in science become more interdisciplinary. Opening up the silos between science disciplines and overcoming common…

Collaborative problem solving is an essential component of any 21st century science career. Scientists are hired, retained, and promoted for solving problems in dynamic and interdisciplinary teams. They discuss issues, explain and justify their opinions, debate, elaborate, and reflect on their collective knowledge. At the same time, both…

Between 2007 and 2010, three types of semester research projects were assigned in BIO 140 Humans and Their Environment, a nonmajors introductory course at Salve Regina University. Specific environmental impact-type assessments were used to foster scientific inquiry and achieve higher scientific literacy. Quantitative and qualitative measurements…

If college science instructors are to use inquiry practices more in the classroom, they need both professional support to foster comfort with the pedagogy and practical ways to engage students in inquiry. Over a semester, we studied 13 community college biology instructors as they adopted bioinformatics problem-based learning (PBL) modules in…

Social networking has become a prominent communication method in recent years. The objective of this study was to assess social media use and perception of utility in higher education classrooms among faculty, graduate, and undergraduate cohorts. As a case study, Twitter was included into a semester course to disseminate relevant course…

Research has suggested that teaching that incorporates students' funds of knowledge can offer an authentic connection to students' lives outside the classroom (Moje et al., 2004) and should aim to enhance active participation of the learners using methods that reduce the unfamiliarity with science felt by some students. In the following…

This article describes an interrupted case study that intersperses information about diffusion and osmosis with content review and knowledge application questions, as well as a simple experiment that can be conducted without the use of a laboratory. The case study was developed for use in an introductory undergraduate biology course. The case…

Sequential science courses that cover multiple semesters, with each course serving as a prerequisite for subsequent courses, create a unique challenge for student engagement and success, as students are expected not only to engage with the new material, but also to quickly connect it with previously learned material. Games, simulations, and other…

New technological developments have minimized training, hardware expense, and distribution problems for the production and use of instructional videos, and any science instructor can now make instructional videos for their classes. We created short "Khan style" videos for the topic of buffers in biochemistry and assigned them as…

This article discusses the results of a survey that was posted for those who regularly peruse the website of the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (NCCSTS). Faculty members were asked about their use of case studies and videos in their General Biology classrooms. The results are enlightening because General Biology is arguably the…

This article presents the combination of three enhanced educational approaches for training future scientists. These methods incorporate skills generally not introduced in the freshman year: student-led blackboard introductions; the writing of scientific papers; and the design, execution, and presentation of an independent lab module. We tested…

Metacognition has been shown to lead to deeper, more durable, and more transferable learning (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). This article describes a case study in which metacognition was introduced to undergraduate science (chemistry) classrooms. Students came to understand the difference between superficial memorization and real…

We used surveys and classroom observations to examine student reactions to two-stage exams, where students first do the exam individually and then redo it collaboratively. Our results show why both students and instructors appreciate this examination format: Two-stage collaborative examinations are relatively easy to implement, have a high…

This study evaluates the effectiveness of human anatomy software in face-to-face and online anatomy laboratory classes. Cognitive, affective, and psychomotor perceived learning was measured for students using Pearson Education's Practice Anatomy Laboratory 2.0 software. This study determined that student-perceived learning was significantly…

Half of students who start college pursuing a degree in science drop out of the sciences by their senior year. This is due, in part, to low attendance and lack of preparation by the students. The failure to develop instructional strategies that actively engage students in science, however, is also a marked factor. A crucial need to reform how…