Learning and Teaching Science

To what extent should we be concerned that a significant group of students are not using IT learning resources? The provision of online resources can be costly and time-consuming and the assumption is that all students will benefit from their implementation.  It should be expected that different students have different preferred modes of learning.
The aim of the present study was to quantify the use of different teaching and learning resources in a mixed learning environment and evaluate whether students had different preferences for ICT and traditional modes of delivery to support specific aspects of their learning. We were interested in determining the extent to which students were using traditional learning resources, on-line modules and communications technologies, such as peer collaboration by email, and whether these differing resources were being used by students to learn new knowledge, to consolidate their knowledge, for exam revision and/or for personal interest.

The School of Chemistry at the University of New South Wales, Australia, is trialing an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) to determine its suitability as a means to capture the research conducted by PhD students. ELN implementation required a partnership to be established between the Library (server space and digital curation), ICT services (technical expertise and IT management), researchers in School of Chemistry (end-users) and the creators of the ELN at Southampton University in the UK. Students who opted to participate in the trial were in the first year of their three-year PhD program, with students in later stages of their PhD (year two and onwards) seeing little value in investing in learning a new work process. The students participating in the trial use an average of five different types of instruments when conducting their experiments and this represents more than five different types of file format. We are now 6 months into the trial and can report that all student participants have found this particular ELN sufficiently flexible to accommodate their experimental work. We are yet to realise the capacity of the ELN as a means to publish data directly from the kinds of instruments used in chemistry research (e.g. mass spectrometers, nuclear magnetic resonance). However, once this has been achieved, we expect to introduce the ELN into undergraduate chemistry curricula.he School of Chemistry at the University of New South Wales, Australia, is trialing an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) to determine its suitability as a means to capture the research conducted by PhD students. ELN implementation required a partnership to be established between the Library (server space and digital curation), ICT services (technical expertise and IT management), researchers in School of Chemistry (end-users) and the creators of the ELN at Southampton University in the UK. Students who opted to participate in the trial were in the first year of their three-year PhD program, with students in later stages of their PhD (year two and onwards) seeing little value in investing in learning a new work process. The students participating in the trial use an average of five different types of instruments when conducting their experiments and this represents more than five different types of file format. We are now 6 months into the trial and can report that all student participants have found this particular ELN sufficiently flexible to accommodate their experimental work. We are yet to realise the capacity of the ELN as a means to publish data directly from the kinds of instruments used in chemistry research (e.g. mass spectrometers, nuclear magnetic resonance). However, once this has been achieved, we expect to introduce the ELN into undergraduate chemistry curricula.

The study was aimed at finding out the effectiveness of internal supervision of the In-In-Out programme in the Colleges of Education in the Western Region of Ghana. The purpose of the study was to find out problems facing supervision of the In-In-Out programme. The research design for the study is the descriptive survey. This method permitted the researchers to obtain data to determine specific characteristics of the group. In all, 480 respondents were included in the study, which comprised 300 Mentees, 180 Mentors. The instrument used in collecting the data was a questionnaire. Data analysis was mainly descriptive. The study revealed that all the supervisors had a problem with non-payment of allowance for supervision. In addition, the supervisors and mentees hardly used teaching and learning materials during the teaching-learning process. Some of the supervisors did not perform their expected roles. It is recommended that the Teacher Education Division of the Ghana Education Service should provide the supervisors with attractive allowances to enable them to supervise the mentees teaching effectively. Again, the Principals in the Colleges of Education should increase the period for the training of the mentors so that they would acquire all the necessary skills for effective supervision.

Tertiary biology students are expected to calculate parameters from their experimental data (e.g. respiration and photosynthesis rates), interpret the meaning(s) of these biological parameters and then communicate their findings in the context of the published literature. Students are expected to have developed numeracy skills from their previous studies and to transfer these skills to their Biology studies. But, how sound are the numerical skills of our biology students? We know that mathematics students are anxious about learning mathematics, and our evidence tells us that many biology students, too, are less than confident about performing calculations. Intervention strategies, e.g. self-efficacy tasks, used during early stages of learning can promote critical thinking and skills development. Using both the research on student anxiety of learning mathematical skills and that of self-efficacy, a numeric skills task was designed for second year plant science students and implemented in a tutorial held in the first week of semester. The numeric skills task allowed each student to determine their confidence of concepts, calculating and converting between units of measure and quantities used in plant physiology. Data collected show that although students were able to demonstrate their understanding of a physical parameter they were not wholly confident with estimating this parameter and slightly less confident with converting between units of measure. We have evidence to show that students who are less confident with their numeracy skills had higher levels of engagement with the numeracy task compared to those students who were more confident with their numeracy skills.

Quinnell R, Hibbert DB, Frey JG, Duffy N, Mocerino M, Todd M, Niamsup P, Plummer A, Milsted A. 2010. Extending the science curriculum: teaching instrumental science at a distance in a global laboratory using a collaborative Electronic Laboratory Notebook. Learning Technology Research Fest. Centre for Research on Computer Supported Learning and Cognition. The University of Sydney, 4th November, 2010. http://www.academia.edu/1152964/Extending_the_science_curriculum_teaching_instrumental_science_at_a_distance_in_a_global_laboratory_using_a_collaborative_Electronic_Laboratory_Notebook 
In the higher education sector there is a strong push to improve the synergy between re- search and teaching. There is a need, therefore, to introduce into the undergraduate curriculum new and emerging technologies that support our current research practices and processes in science. There is no doubt that future scientific practice will increasingly involve collaborations that exploit new technologies with data and information being shared via the web. This project will extend the science curriculum by demonstrating how instrumental science can be taught at a distance using a collaborative electronic laboratory notebook: http://altc.ourexperiment.org/.