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Assessment of attitudes towards statistics [ATS] is needed to support the success of statistics education in tertiary institutions, so measuring instruments with high accuracy is required. However, existing instruments to measure ATS have not considered the use of technology as an essential variable affecting success in statistics education. The current study sought to fill this gap by developing a standardized instrument to measure ATS and considering aspects of technology use as a necessity for statistics education in the modern era. The study involved 367 students from various study programs spread across several universities in Indonesia as participants. To examine the quality of the instrument, we performed factor analysis, reliability estimation, and item calibration. We calibrated items based on classical test theory [CTT] and item response theory [IRT] using the graded response model [GRM]. Exploratory factor analysis [EFA] indicated three main factors (i.e., interest, difficulty, and value) for measuring attitudes toward statistics. Factor loading of each factor component > 0.45, indicating that all items contributed to the main factor. Cronbach's alpha coefficient of the three factors ranged from 0.784 to 0.929, indicating that the instrument was reliable. Item calibration based on CTT and IRT-GRM indicated that item performance was satisfactory regarding item endorsement and discrimination. In addition, the information function indicated that the instrument accurately measures attitudes from very low to very high levels. Overall, the psychometric properties of the instrument indicated that the instrument was valid, reliable, and feasible for use in practice and research in the field of education.

Background: Undergraduate engineering students experiencing distress are less likely than peers to ask for professional help. A population-specific instrument to facilitate the identification of factors that influence mental healthcare utilization could guide development and testing of interventions to increase help seeking. Purpose: We used mixed methods guided by the Integrated Behavioral Model (IBM) to develop and evaluate the Undergraduate Engineering Mental Health Help-Seeking Instrument (UE-MH-HSI). Method: First, we adapted existing measures of mental health help-seeking intention and mechanisms (i.e., attitudes, perceived norm: injunctive, perceived norm: descriptive, personal agency: autonomy, personal agency: capacity). Second, we coded qualitative interviews (N = 33) to create population-specific mental health help-seeking belief measures (i.e., outcome beliefs, experiential beliefs, beliefs about others' expectations, beliefs about others' behavior, beliefs about barriers and facilitators). Third, we tested the psychometric properties using data from 596 undergraduate engineering students at a historically White, research-focused institution in southern United States. Results: Psychometric analyses indicated that (1) help-seeking mechanism and intention measures demonstrated unidimensionality, internal consistency, construct replicability, and sufficient variability; (2) mechanism measures demonstrated criterion evidence of validity; and (3) most items within the belief measures demonstrated sufficient variability and convergent evidence of validity. Conclusions: The UE-MH-HSI is an evidence-based tool for investigating mental health help-seeking factors and their relationship to help-seeking behavior, well-being, academic success, and engineering identity formation. Guidelines for use are provided.

Students in a typical instrumental analysis course may learn more than 30 analytical techniques. There are more than 150 components associated with the instrumentation that they learn. To help students organize this large amount of information, we classified these components into four categories: sources, samples, discriminators, and detectors. In this work, color-coded pictograms are used to help students identify components associated with a particular instrumental technique. For example, a UV-visible spectrophotometer can be depicted by using four color-coded pictograms. Pictograms were created for instrumentation on each of the following topics: spectroscopy, electrochemistry, chromatography, elemental analysis, surface analysis, and thermal analysis. Methods to incorporate these pictograms into the instrumental analysis course and assess their effectiveness are provided.

During an assignment as a change leader of a complex IT change program within a Dutch public government organization, I used action learning to develop and support the desired changes and to tackle the complex problems that usually accompany such a change program. During this action learning project, I took the role of facilitator and I devised and presented the initial conceptual tools and their application to two action learning sets. Subsequently, after proposing the idea of ??applying action learning to problem solving, the program team members including the senior managers, were prepared to apply action learning as an integral part of the IT program. We formed two action learning sets, with around 10 persons in each set. One set consisted of diverse and multidisciplinary subject matter experts, and external IT suppliers who participated as program team members. Another set was made up of managers of delivering departments, who would take the lead in adopting the solutions developed by the software development and implementation program. To shape the action learning approaches and processes within the sets during the lifetime of the change program, I developed, and we used, seven instruments (MALS) based on progressive insights, and applied them within the sets for process, quality, and improvement based on progressive insight. This paper describes the seven instruments and explains how they were used within the project.

This study attempted to create a valid and reliable instrument to measure how gifted children perceive the gifted label and others' perceptions of giftedness. We recruited a total of 300 gifted Turkish children (59.3% males; 40.7% females) aged 10-13 years (M = 11.4, SD = 0.99) to this validity and reliability study. For validity concerns, we first pooled the items relying on the relevant theoretical frameworks. Next, we resorted to expert opinions and employed the Lawshe technique to explore the content validity of the scale. Then, we performed confirmatory factor analysis to investigate the construct validity of the scale after checking multivariate normality through the Relative Multivariate Kurtosis value. Finally, we calculated Cronbach's alpha coefficients to reveal the internal consistency of the five-factor model. Content validity ratio values showed that each item on the scale yielded an acceptable level of content validity. In addition, we concluded a significant Content validity index for the scale (0.82). Finally, we calculated Cronbach's alpha coefficients to be higher than 0.70 for the subscales. Overall, the findings suggested that the perception of gifted label scale (PGLS) has an acceptable psychometric quality regarding its validity and reliability. Gifted children's self-reports may provide more valuable data to better understand the labeling phenomenon and help design preventive educational interventions against the negative impacts of labeling. Therefore the PGLS may lead the way of future studies on the effects of the gifted label on gifted children.

Contribution: This article contributes to the literature surrounding first-year engineering students' academic well-being by proposing a conceptual framework guiding an understanding of supportive sources that foster students' academic well-being. A survey was designed and tested accordingly, and four factors that contribute to students' academic well-being were identified to inspire the improvement of a future course and curriculum design. Background: Prior research has pointed out that students' academic well-being has a significant impact on their persistence in their current study, learning experience, academic achievement, and competence development. However, limited studies have explored first-year engineering students' academic well-being and supportive factors in the field of engineering higher education. To support engineering students to become agentic professionals, it is meaningful to pay close attention to their academic well-being and help them to become purposeful learners at an early stage of their professional development. Research Question: (1) How can an instrument be developed and validated to characterize the sources of students' academic well-being in a project-based learning approaches (PBL) context? (2) What sources could foster students' academic well-being in a PBL context? Are there significant differences in age, gender, and discipline as a function of sources of academic well-being? Methodology: With the guidance of the conceptual framework with the domains of internal and external sources, a survey was designed based on a literature review and conducted in a PBL environment. The survey's content validity, construct validity, and reliability were tested using expert review, a pilot study, exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and Cronbach's alpha. Findings: Supportive sources fostering students' academic well-being were reported in the factors of personal values, agentic action, interactions within the learning environment, and external support. Comparisons between gender, age, and discipline verified the different impacts of the four factors on fostering academic well-being.

Using integrated learning and project-based learning can make correlation of knowledge and skills in order to make students apply the knowledge to become a new knowledge for creating project to be prepared for Thailand 4.0 with the topic electrical measuring instrumentation project with the Internet of thing. The research process divided into 3 parts: 1) topics analysis and objectives analysis for integrated learning 2) project-based learning for projects assignment and 3) Integrated learning and project-based learning. The sample were 18 4th year students in Electrical engineering manufacturing department, Bansomdejchaopraya Rajabhat University. The assessment stages were followed by 1) project proposal 2) project planning and design 3) project implementation 4) project evaluation and 5) project presentation and report. The result found that: students can create their electrical measuring instrumentation group's project from this learning method and the students' evaluation and feedback were agree with this learning model. In conclusion, leaning by using integrated learning and project-based learning can improve thinking skills, teamwork skills, use of technology and other skills related to their project topic such as microcontroller and computer programming also promoting students-centered and gives the opportunity to make discussion between students and lecturer to suggest and solve students problems.

Highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of research, we present a series of experiments for undergraduate lab courses that teach the principles of preparative ion exchange chromatography and flame emission spectroscopy. Through these inquiry-based experiments, the students learn about experimental design and instrument limitations, naturally connecting general chemistry principles with analytical and physical chemistry and materials science. The goal is to devise experimental parameters that allow quantitative ion exchange on a small scale, and to monitor the exchange with optical spectroscopy. The small-footprint, inexpensive flame emission spectroscopy setup we developed can be used to accurately determine relative concentrations of alkali metal ions in a sample, while also being suitable for simpler experiments, which allow it to be employed in a variety of classes. In a demonstration for energy research, we then perform the presented experiments on redox flow battery electrolytes to investigate the influence of the cation choice on battery performance.

This study aims to analyze the developmental characteristics of early childhood musical expressions from a viewpoint of movement elements, and to devise a method to evaluate the development regarding musical expression in early childhood using machine learning. Previous studies regarding motion capture have shown analysis results such as specific actions and responses to music (Burger et al, 2013). In this study, firstly, ANOVA was attempted on full-body movements. The author quantitatively analyzed the motion capture data regarding 3-year-old, 4-year-old, and 5-year-old children in the nursery schools (n = 84) and kindergartens (n = 94) through a three-way non-repeated ANOVA. As a result, a statistically significant difference was observed in movement of body parts. Specifically, right hand movement such as moving distance and the moving average acceleration showed a significance of difference. Secondly, machine learning (decision trees, Sequential Minimum Optimization algorithm (SMO), Support Vector Machine (SVM) and neural network (multilayer perceptron)) was deployed to build classification models for evaluation of degree of musical development classified by educators with simultaneously recorded children's video with associated motion capture data. Among varieties of trained classification models, multilayer perceptron obtained best results of confusion matrix and showed fair classifying precision and usability to support educators to evaluate children's achievement degree of musical development. As a result of the machine learning of multilayered perceptron, the movement of the pelvis has a strong relationship with musical development degree. Its classification accuracy found consistent to affirm the availability to utilize the model to support educators to evaluate children's attainment of musical expression.

This paper is an examination of a teacher professional development program in northeast Louisiana, that provided 30 teachers and their students with the technology, skills, and content knowledge to collect data and explore weather trends. Data were collected from both continuous monitoring weather stations and simple school-based weather stations to better understand core disciplinary ideas connecting Life and Earth sciences. Using a curricular model that combines experiential and place-based educational approaches to create a rich and relevant atmosphere for STEM learning, the goal of the program was to empower teachers and their students to engage in ongoing data collection analysis that could contribute to greater understanding and ownership of the environment at the local and regional level. The program team used a mixed-methodological approach that examined implementation at the site level and student impact. Analysis of teacher and student surveys, teacher interviews and classroom observation data suggest that the level of implementation of the program related directly to the ways in which students were using the weather data to develop STEM literacy. In particular, making meaning out of the data by studying patterns, interpreting the numbers, and comparing with long-term data from other sites seemed to drive critical thinking and STEM literacy in those classrooms that fully implemented the program. Findings also suggest that the project has the potential to address the unique needs of traditionally underserved students in the rural south, most notably, those students in high-needs rural settings that rely on an agrarian economy.

Success in undergraduate chemical experiments requires students to develop knowledge and skills of instrumentation, equipment, and chemical techniques. In this technology report, we propose an adaptable and user-focused strategy to improve students' foundational skill and proficiency with chemical laboratory techniques and instrumentation. The strategy is composed of multiperspective filming of experimental activities using mobile phones or professional-level filming to create videos that can be freely viewed by students in situ during laboratory classes on a mobile device (iPad). Details of mixed digital approaches for a variety of chemical experimental techniques (10 examples) are compared with professional-level filming and mobile-phone filming. The results show that both the accuracy and precision of the developed videos are highly suitable for teaching purposes. Use of mobile-phone cameras permitted chemical techniques to be filmed from multiple angles in constrained spaces, such as fume hoods. A major benefit to students was the utility of the videos on portable devices, as students were informed by the video while setting up or performing the task at hand during laboratory sessions.

My point of departure in this essay is that student approaches to assessment appear to have become more instrumental, and that there has been a correlative propensity in my teaching practice to "teach to the test". Hence, both learners and teachers seem to have become more strategic in relation to assessment. This situation, I argue, is a product of power relations within contemporary higher education institutions (HEIs) and the function higher education performs in the new capitalism. Assessment instrumentalism is part of a new learning culture; it is, I contend, a rational and pragmatic response to current social and economic imperatives. Thus, when designing assessments it is necessary to recognise and work with this instrumentalism if we desire its reconfiguration. The design of assessments worth learning and teaching for is made possible, I argue, by the development of a pedagogy for itself.

With a male, adult subject, this study measured the punch force and kick force of the Japanese martial art Nihon-Kempo, the movements of the dominant (right) arm, leg, and the movements of the legs using timed synchronization. Using an electromyogram (EMG), the relationship between the variation of punch force and the variation of the electrical potential of the muscles were examined. It was observed that when the punch force was at maximum, the electrical potential of the muscles was not at maximum. The relationship between the variation of the punch force and that of the ground reaction force was experimentally analyzed. The variation of punch force based on time progression was examined. The theoretical punch force values were calculated by establishing a differential equation for a fist with a glove and a target load cell to assure the validity of our experimental equipment. This second order differential equation was transformed into two first order differential equations. Using the Runge-Kutta methods, the two first order differential equations were solved simultaneously. The calculated results were compared with the experimental data. It was found that the theoretical solutions corresponded to the experimental data. Therefore, it has been recognized that the experimental equipment functioned reliably. For the kick, it was examined that the velocity of the heel and toes became maximum around the halfway point in the kick's trajectory and hit the target load cell while reducing in velocity. It is supposed that the trial subject began the kicking motion and aimed at the target load cell while experiencing a reduction in velocity of his heel and toes due to his leg reaching maximum extension. The force of the kick, about 4500 N, was roughly 2.8 times stronger than that of the punch. (Contains 9 figures.)

Engaging students with real-world activities can be effective in supporting the learning of mathematics, "whenever possible, real-world situations will provide a context for both introducing and applying geometric topics" (NCTM 1989). Tool making is a way to bring real-world mathematics into the classroom and using the tool is a way of taking classroom mathematics into the student's real-world. This article focuses on a student-constructed protractor. The pedagogical discussion is followed by detailed descriptions of the construction steps. These steps together with alternative constructions offer opportunities to explore deeper mathematics. The construction of the protractor requires the use of a range of techniques that provide context for geometry problems involving congruent triangles, properties of equilateral and isosceles triangles and parallel lines. The protractor is a measurement tool used in constructing and measuring angles and is a learning aid for the teaching and learning of trigonometry, similarity and the unit circle. The author describes two activities, Super-size Protractor and Unique Triangles, which provide a shared experience for future class discourse, and outlines the steps involved in the construction of the Super-size Protractor. As each step is presented, the mathematics of the construction and alternative construction procedures is made explicit and justified along with practical considerations. A list of ways in which the protractor maybe used is presented. (Contains 12 figures.)

When the focus of instruction is on learning to use mathematical tools--such as a ruler or a calculator--as a procedure, students tend not to incorporate their own mathematical reasoning. This unreflective use of tools hinders students' questioning of the reasonableness of their answers. This article describes how children expressed their mathematical agency by challenging the knowledge authority of a mathematical tool: the protractor. The first author--a researcher in the classroom--and the second author--the classroom teacher--encouraged students' critique of the traditional protractor. Students expressed mathematical agency by (1) challenging the protractor's effectiveness in helping them measure angles and (2) by imagining an alternative tool. The students did not build their imagined tool. Instead they used their imagined alternative tool to help them better understand how to use a conventional protractor. The authors first define student mathematical agency as an important component of student learning experience. Then they describe how students' initial use of a traditional tool presented an opportunity to foster the expression of their mathematical agency. Then they illustrate how in turn, the expression of their mathematical agency helped students critically consider the traditional tool to make sense of it.

It is well known that mental state verbs are difficult to acquire, but little is known about the acquisition of mental state language encoded through intonation. Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS) has at least three intonation contours available for marking polar questions (PQs): ¡H*L% marks an utterance as a PQ; H+L*L%, in addition to doing the former, conveys that the speaker has a belief about the (p)roposition and L*HL% marks the utterance as a PQ in addition to marking the speaker's disbelief regarding p. A longitudinal study of two PRS-acquiring children (1;07-3;06) and their caretakers was carried out, analyzing 661 PQs from child speech and 4,574 from child-directed speech. Results show that while all three contours are used in child-directed speech, children almost categorically produce the contour that does not convey any specific mental state. Almost no tokens of the contour conveying that the speaker has a belief about a proposition were found in child speech (4/661 total PQs), and these only appeared after 2;08. No felicitous, nonimitative uses of the contour that conveys a speaker's disbelief were found in child speech. Like other mental state language, intonation conveying epistemic information appears to emerge relatively late in child production.

How to move science-based labs online has been one of the main obstacles associated with the development of online science programs. In the spring of 2006 and again in 2007, we organized online workshops broadly based around the central theme of Moving the Lab Online. The objective of these workshops was to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, thoughts, and experience associated with the challenges of moving science labs into the online environment. Produced by Sloan-C, the first workshop, entitled "Practical Techniques for Utilizing Remote Instrumentation to Enhance Science Education," focused primarily on the technical aspects of using remote instrumentation. The second, entitled "Changing the Laboratory Learning Experience Using the Online Environment," looked at issues associated with teaching online labs using remote instrumentation. A number of similar themes emerged from these workshops. These ranged from a need to better articulate the role of the laboratory experience to questions of whether labs even need to be part of the online science learning experience, to the need for the development of best practices. This paper presents the authors' reflections on the prominent themes and discussions that emerged from the Moving the Lab Online workshop series.

Understanding the extent of commitment to and identification with traditional cultural experiences is essential for working with American Indian people (Whitbeck, 2006). The purpose of this study was to determine the usefulness of a practical measure of enculturation for AI people by examining its reliability and validity within the context of three previous studies. (Contains 2 tables.)

Personal responsibility has long been considered an important component in self-directed learning. And yet, a theoretical understanding of personal responsibility that could lead to meaningful instrumentation has eluded the field. The present study considers the merits of the Triangle Model of Responsibility (TMR) (Schlenker, Britt, Pennington, Murphy, & Doherty, 1994) as a useful construct for the field of self-directed learning. This study considers how well the TMR fits with other theoretical constructs and considers possibilities for future research. (Contains 1 figure.)

The assistive technology (AT) field acknowledges that different stakeholders vary in their perspectives of service delivery outcomes. While the literature delineates consumers, caregivers and providers as stakeholders with distinct views, very little research documents these unique perspectives. This study reports on the perspectives of (a) research-based federally funded, and (b) commercial AT product developers. Developers who received federal funding in 2001 were queried on their outcomes methodologies. Also, a random sample of manufacturers drawn from the ABLEDATA database and technology exhibitors at RESNA and AOTA conferences were surveyed. The data revealed that developers acknowledge the usefulness of outcomes data and relate that they would use outcomes information if available. Commercial manufacturers perceived cost as different from other outcome dimensions, interestingly, with lower importance. Also, formal research methods were used more frequently than anticipated. This same group of commercial manufacturers also stated a gap between outcome measures they used and what they would use if available. This study contributes an important empirical snapshot of AT product developers and their perspectives of AT outcomes. (Contains 6 tables and 4 figures.)

A multi-instrument approach has been applied to the efficient identification of polymers in an upper-division undergraduate instrumental analysis laboratory course. Attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) is used in conjunction with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to identify 18 polymer samples and to determine whether polyethylene samples are high density or low density and whether nylon samples are composed of nylon-6 or nylon-6,6. This experiment introduces students to the use of two different instruments to qualitatively analyze several polymers in an efficient manner.

Virtually all modern chemical instrumentation is controlled by computers. While software packages are continually becoming easier to use, allowing for more researchers to utilize more complex instruments, conveying some level of understanding as to how computers and instruments communicate is still an important part of the undergraduate curriculum. Understanding how digital and analog signals are used to allow the smooth operation of an instrument allows the user to better understand the possible sources or problems when instruments stop working optimally. The experiment presented here allows students to investigate the communication between the computer and a high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) system by allowing them to construct a LabVIEW-based control program. Student understanding of instrument control is reinforced by having them control pump speed, detector zeroing, and a solvent recycling valve while also monitoring the injection port status and the detector output. Students gain an understanding of the HPLC process by incorporating all of the instrument tasks into their control software and then use their system to analyze a mixture of five small organic molecules, thereby gaining insight into the chemical concepts underlying HPLC separations.

The aim of this research was to investigate high achievers' erroneous answers and misconceptions on the angle concept. The participants consisted of 233 grade 6 students drawn from eight classes in two well-established elementary schools of Trabzon, Turkey. All the participants were considered to be current achievers in mathematics, graded 4 or 5 out of 5, and selected via a purposive sampling method. Data were collected through six questions reflecting the learning competencies set out in the grade 6 curriculum in Turkey and the findings of previous studies that aimed to identify students' misconceptions of the angle concept. This questionnaire was then applied over a 40-minute period in each class. The findings were analysed by two researchers whose inter-rater agreement was computed as 0.97, or almost perfect. Thereafter, coding discrepancies were resolved, and consensus was established. We found that although the participants in this study were high achievers, they still held several misconceptions on the angle concept such as recognizing a straight angle or a right angle in different orientations. We also show how some of these misconceptions could have arisen due to the definitions or representations used in the textbook, and offer suggestions concerning their content in the future.

In this article, the authors present two activities in which students explore angles and related geometric properties in the context of dance, namely ballet. The activities have been successfully implemented in pre-service numeracy classes at Monash University's two-year, post-degree teacher education program (MTeach). Specifically, the activities explored the fundamental notion of angles as a measurement of rotation, scaffolding students' learning through an illustration of benchmark angles (e.g., 180º). They highlight the connection between mathematics and dance, and allow students to collaboratively learn mathematics concepts kinaesthetically in a real-world context. As the activities are neither resource-laden nor require a dance expert, they are easy to implement, allowing for equity and access for all students, in line with recommendations from both the "Australian Curriculum: Mathematics" (ACARA, n.d.-d) and the "Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians" (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, 2008).

Purpose: This study investigated whether and to what extent iconic co-speech gestures contribute to information from visible speech to enhance degraded speech comprehension at different levels of noise-vocoding. Previous studies of the contributions of these 2 visual articulators to speech comprehension have only been performed separately. Method: Twenty participants watched videos of an actress uttering an action verb and completed a free-recall task. The videos were presented in 3 speech conditions (2- band noise-vocoding, 6-band noise-vocoding, clear), 3 multimodal conditions (speech + lips blurred, speech + visible speech, speech + visible speech + gesture), and 2 visual-only conditions (visible speech, visible speech + gesture). Results: Accuracy levels were higher when both visual articulators were present compared with 1 or none. The enhancement effects of (a) visible speech, (b) gestural information on top of visible speech, and (c) both visible speech and iconic gestures were larger in 6-band than 2-band noise-vocoding or visual-only conditions. Gestural enhancement in 2-band noise-vocoding did not differ from gestural enhancement in visual-only conditions. Conclusions: When perceiving degraded speech in a visual context, listeners benefit more from having both visual articulators present compared with 1. This benefit was larger at 6-band than 2-band noise-vocoding, where listeners can benefit from both phonological cues from visible speech and semantic cues from iconic gestures to disambiguate speech.

A public demonstration of laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) for fast and sensitive qualitative elemental analysis of solid everyday objects is described. This demonstration served as a showcase model for modern instrumentation (and for elemental analysis, in particular) to the public. Several steps were made to adapt conventional laboratory-based ICP-MS instrumentation to bring it to the outreach event and also to improve ease-of-use, which helped facilitate discussion with attendees. Rather than the conventional closed-cell design, this setup consisted of a laser ablation (LA) system that allowed for ablation in ambient conditions which enabled swift sample exchange during the demonstration. A gas exchange device was operated between the LA system and the ICP-MS instrument allowing for the replacement of ambient gases with argon. This particular setup was utilized during an open day event to demonstrate how LA-ICPMS can be used for qualitative analysis of major and trace elemental components in objects. In particular, visitors were encouraged to present objects for elemental analysis. Complete elemental analysis of supplied samples such as keys, coins, rings, and necklaces was demonstrated by recording full mass spectra. Variation of the elemental composition across different regions of objects was shown by scanning the laser beam and acquiring transient elemental signals.

We propose an integrated curriculum to establish essential abilities of computer programming for the freshmen of a physics department. The implementation of the graphical-based interfaces from Scratch to LabVIEW then to LabVIEW for Arduino in the curriculum "Computer-Assisted Instrumentation in the Design of Physics Laboratories" brings rigorous algorithm and syntax protocols together with imagination, communication, scientific applications and experimental innovation. The effectiveness of the curriculum was evaluated via statistical analysis of questionnaires, interview responses, the increase in student numbers majoring in physics, and performance in a competition. The results provide quantitative support that the curriculum remove huge barriers to programming which occur in text-based environments, helped students gain knowledge of programming and instrumentation, and increased the students' confidence and motivation to learn physics and computer languages.

These days, multiplying two numbers together is a breeze. One just enters the two numbers into one's calculator, press a button, and there is the answer! It never used to be this easy. Generations of students struggled with tables of logarithms, and thought it was a miracle when the slide rule first appeared. In this article, the author discusses how to multiply by adding and offers ways on how to make a simple slide rule.

For most chemistry curricula, laboratory-based activities in quantitative and instrumental analysis continue to be an important aspect of student development/training, one that can be more effective if conceptual understanding is delivered through an inquiry-based process relating the material to relevant issues of public interest and student career trajectories. Laboratory experiences that actively engage students in this manner can be difficult to identify and execute. A special topics, project-based laboratory module is presented here that utilizes multiple techniques and instruments to investigate toxic metal content (lead, cadmium, and arsenic) in children's toys and toy jewelry. The module effectively illustrates a considerable number of fundamental and advanced quantitative analysis principles including sample digestion, Beer-Lambert law, calibration curve, and standard addition analyses, as well as instrumental analysis considerations of atomic absorption spectroscopy including atomization efficiency (e.g., flames vs furnaces), matrix modifiers, and nondestructive spectroscopy. Module effectiveness stems from the illustration of critical chemical analysis principles in the context of projects with student-directed hypotheses and experimental results that are clearly relevant to the interface of basic science, medicine, and public health: primary career interests for a significant number of undergraduates in the physical and life sciences.

An instrumentation-based laboratory curriculum combining traditional unknown analyses with student-designed projects has been developed for an introductory analytical chemistry course. In the first half of the course, students develop laboratory skills and instrumental proficiency by rotating through six different instruments performing quantitative analyses of unknowns. In the second half of the course, students use these skills to design and perform a quantitative chemical analysis of a real-world sample of their choosing in which students direct each step in the analytical process: sampling, sample preparation, data acquisition, interpretation, reporting, and drawing conclusions. Unique features of the course include open lab periods, an online lab manual with embedded video demonstrations, and the publication of student projects in an online journal. Assessment results show that students report high levels of gain in relation to the desired outcomes of the overall project.