Understanding Randomness on a Molecular Level: A Diagnostic Tool.

Undergraduate biology students' molecular-level understanding of stochastic (also referred to as random or noisy) processes found in biological systems is often limited to those examples discussed in class. Therefore, students frequently display little ability to accurately transfer their knowledge to other contexts. Furthermore, elaborate tools to assess students' understanding of these stochastic processes are missing, despite the fundamental nature of this concept and the increasing evidence demonstrating its importance in biology.

Problem-solving in virtual environment simulations prior to direct instruction for differential diagnosis in medical education: An experimental study.

Despite acquiring vast content knowledge about the functioning of the human body through university teaching, medical students struggle to transfer that knowledge to one of the core disciplinary practices - differential diagnosis. The authors aimed to overcome this problem by implementing computer-based virtual environment simulations in medical education courses. In an experimental study, the authors compared problem-solving in medical computer-based virtual environment simulations prior to instruction with an instruction-first approach.

The Disappearing "Advantage of Abstract Examples in Learning Math".

When teaching a novel mathematical concept, should we present learners with abstract or concrete examples? In this experiment, we conduct a critical replication and extension of a well-known study that argued for the general advantage of abstract examples (Kaminski, Sloutsky, & Heckler, 2008a). We demonstrate that theoretically motivated yet minor modifications of the learning design put this argument in question. A key finding from this study is that participants who trained with improved concrete examples performed as well as, or better than, participants who trained with abstract examples.