The COVID-19 pandemic forced higher-education institutions to close campuses and pivot all face-to-face (F2F) instruction online. This transition to Crisis Distance Education (CDE) was unprecedented in scope and speed as it was implemented globally. We surveyed students in a large, introductory-level biology course to understand their opinions…

In very large lecture classes, student engagement is always a challenge, and many instructors use electronic student response systems (SRS) to promote student engagement and active learning. The conventional wisdom in using student response systems is that the technology matters less than the pedagogy; it is the added value of the instructor that…

With only minimal changes to the course structure, classroom clickers were introduced in introductory chemistry to allow students to regularly compare their perceived abilities with their actual abilities, a measurement also known as calibration. Students used the clickers to provide knowledge judgments, an indication of their confidence in…

This article outlines a study that compared an online virtual laboratory with a face-to-face laboratory. The main objective of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a virtual method of instruction for a general studies, physical science laboratory course. Using a pretest-posttest only design with nonequivalent control groups, differences…

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…

Instructors are frequently uncertain about the usefulness of methods to promote student-centered learning and uneasy about adopting new technologies such as clickers. We describe a study in which an honors biology instructor implemented clickers as a mechanism for students to complete in-class quizzes. To determine the usefulness of this approach,…

The authors explored whether a new pedagogy using personal response systems (clickers) along with case study teaching improved students' perceptions of their understanding of science in large introductory biology classrooms. Twelve faculty from nine institutions and 1,457 students across the United States and Canada participated in this study.…

Science teaching and learning can be made both engaging and student-centered using pedagogical, computer-based learning tools. We have developed self-paced interactive problem-solving tutorials for introductory physics. These tutorials can provide guidance and support for a variety of problem-solving techniques, as well as opportunities for…