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Gateway science courses are an ongoing obstacle to recruitment into STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). Students come into courses that have a high cognitive load, which makes success in the course challenging. Instructional design can be used to reduce cognitive load. The findings demonstrate that leveraging pre- and post-lecture quizzes has the capacity to reduce cognitive load. Over three semesters, assessed 164 students were assessed while taking SCB201 (General Biology I). Students in the participant and control groups were given surveys to gauge the experiment's effectiveness. These surveys were given at the beginning, midterm, and end of the semester. The surveys collected student feedback concerning attendance habits, reading for knowledge, and course difficulty each semester. The participant group findings showed favorable increases in attendance and reading for knowledge. Additionally, students in the participant group found the quizzes helped them to better understand core concepts as the semester progressed. It was determined that these quizzes helped focus learning by causing a decrease in cognitive load for students. This methodology has universal application to any type of course needing to reduce cognitive load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of factors contribute to attrition in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education at the community college level including underpreparedness, lack of confidence, and broader socioeconomic issues. This work describes our efforts to improve student learning and overall success in a community college General Biology I lab course through the implementation of microscope clinics specifically designed to improve student microscope skills. We measured the effectiveness of our clinics using pre- and postclinic surveys as well as student performance on a microscope practicum. The majority of targeted students responded positively to the clinics and subsequently performed well on a hands-on microscope practicum. We feel that efforts such as ours can help students master a specific task of relevance to their further studies while simultaneously increasing confidence in their overall STEM "identity," leading to improved performance across their educational landscape.