A successful undergraduate research experience depends on a good mentor/ teacher. Surveys, interviews, and focus group discussions reveal that students and their mentors agree that research learning is very different from classroom learning. They do however disagree about some of the dynamics and priorities of the mentoring relationship. (Contains…

The phenomenon of resonance is applicable to almost every branch of physics. Without resonance, there wouldn't be televisions or stereos, or even swings on the playground. However, resonance also has undesirable side effects such as irritating noises in the car and the catastrophic events such as helicopters flying apart. In this article, the…

The application of technology to educational settings has always been an interesting phenomenon. Each new technological advance is described as a panacea for whatever ails education at that moment. As people move closer to more current times, the influence of personal computers and the rise of the internet has affected the educational setting in…

In this article, the author discusses how teachers should not merely teach their students content-mastery and problem-solving skills. She believes that teachers should learn about the sources of their students. The author discusses that in order to effectively teach students, teachers must not give everything to their students. Students must be…

Freshmen frequently struggle with major decisions both in and out of school. Even if they attend required advisement sessions, they do not always have a clear idea which questions to ask and which information to share with advisor. Large numbers of students make poor choices and have unfortunate experiences as a result. To focus attention on some…

This study examined the effect of physical and virtual field trips on undergraduate, nonscience majors. No significant differences were seen in achievement, attitudes, learning styles, interactions between field trip and learning styles, or students' ability to answer questions at different levels. Results imply that both field trips promote…

A multidisciplinary learning community provided environmental management students the opportunity to work with students in different classes and majors to create designs for improving the appearance and environmental quality of a lake on a university campus. The experience increased student appreciation for the contribution of other disciplines in…

Prospective science teachers should be taught how to base their planning and instructional decisions on the systematic analysis of evidence of student understanding. We describe three investigations that teach future secondary school science teachers to improve their practice by gathering and analyzing data about teaching and learning. (Contains 1…

Educators have been grappling with the problem of students retaining and applying in later years information learned in prerequisite courses. One general faculty complaint is that students appear to retain very little from their prerequisite courses, even if they completed the course in the semester immediately before. In order to determine if…

The DNA triplet code also functions as a binary code. Because double-ring compounds cannot bind to double-ring compounds in the DNA code, the sequence of bases classified simply as purines or pyrimidines can encode for smaller groups of possible amino acids. This is an intuitive approach to teaching the DNA code. (Contains 6 figures.)

Elementary teachers have been identified as the single most important influence on student's future attitudes and motivations toward science. Research indicates that K-8 science teachers emphasize memorization more than the exploration of questions or critical thought as a result of their college science experiences. The reasons students gradually…

This article describes an interdisciplinary course that develops essential mathematical modeling skills within an introductory biology setting. The course embodies recent recommendations regarding the need for interdisciplinary, inquiry-based mathematical preparation of undergraduates in the biological sciences. Evaluation indicates that the…

The author describes the workshop he presented at Desert Vista Campus of the Pima Community College System on the use of case studies in science. During the workshop the participants developed their own cases and presented their cases to a group of students that were hired to act as expert critics. The faculty, usually in pairs, presented their…

Since publication of Boyer's seminal work entitled "Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate" (1990), there has been a substantial movement in higher education to improve the quality of instruction and to develop the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) at universities and colleges across the United States. Typically,…

Developing education skills in future college faculty is challenging. At the postdoctoral level, Fellowships in Research and Science Teaching (FIRST) fellows effectively integrate research with mentored undergraduate teaching experiences and foster interinstitutional cooperation and participation of minorities and women in science. (Contains 3…