Publications related to Science education

Teacher-Mediated and Student-Led Interaction with a Physics Simulation: Effects on the Learning Experience

Computer simulations are often used as support material for science education, as they can engage students through inquiry-based learning, promote their active interaction in the experimentation phase, and help them visualize abstract concepts. For instanc ...

2024

Digital Intervention for Collaborative and Human-Centered Activities in Design-Based Learning Scenarios

Denis Gillet, Isabelle Barbara Marie-Hélène Cardia

Training science and engineering students to become responsible citizens and professionals requires novel and creative pedagogical approaches, such as design thinking. This concept relies on processes and tools to develop creativity and problem-solving ski ...

IEEE2023

Hits and Misses: Digital Contact Tracing in a Pandemic

Marcel Salathé

Traditional contact tracing is one of the most powerful weapons people have in the battle against a pandemic, especially when vaccines do not yet exist or do not afford complete protection from infection. But the effectiveness of contact tracing hinges on ...

SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD2023

OSSCAR, an open platform for collaborative development of computational tools for education in science

Giovanni Pizzi, Sara Bonella, Dou Du

In this paper we present the Open Software Services for Classrooms and Research (OSSCAR) platform. OSSCAR provides an open collaborative environment to develop and access educational resources in the form of web applications, for which various deployment m ...

ELSEVIER2023

A landmark environmental law looks ahead

Devis Tuia

In late December 1973, the United States enacted what some would come to call “the pitbull of environmental laws.” In the 50 years since, the formidable regulatory teeth of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have been credited with considerable successes, ob ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2023

Quantifying online citizen science: Dynamics and demographics of public participation in science

Jérôme Baudry, Steven Piguet

Citizen scientists around the world are collecting data with their smartphones, performing scientific calculations on their home computers, and analyzing images on online platforms. These online citizen science projects are frequently lauded for their pote ...

2023

Co-constructing an Effective, Sustainable and Scalable Primary School Computer Science Curricular Reform

Laila Abdelsalam El-Hamamsy

Over the past few decades, the debates have shifted from whether to how Computer Science (CS) should be introduced into formal education. Given the diverse ways to introduce CS into formal education, and the struggles many countries have faced, considerabl ...

EPFL2023

First-person experience cannot rescue causal structure theories from the unfolding argument

Michael Herzog, Adrien Christophe Doerig, Aaron Schurger

We recently put forward an argument, the Unfolding Argument (UA), that integrated information theory (IIT) and other causal structure theories are either already falsified or unfalsifiable, which provoked significant criticism. It seems that we and the cri ...

Elsevier2022

Roadmap on Machine learning in electronic structure

Michele Ceriotti, Jigyasa Nigam, Andrea Grisafi, Max David Veit

In recent years, we have been witnessing a paradigm shift in computational materials science. In fact, traditional methods, mostly developed in the second half of the XXth century, are being complemented, extended, and sometimes even completely replaced by ...

IOP Publishing Ltd2022

The TACS Model: Understanding Primary School Teachers’ Adoption of Computer Science Pedagogical Content

Francesco Mondada, Frédérique Michèle Chessel-Lazzarotto, Jessica Elke Dehler Zufferey, Barbara Bruno, Laila Abdelsalam El-Hamamsy

Context With the introduction of computer science (CS) into curricula worldwide, teachers’ adoption of CS-pedagogical content is essential to ensure the long-term success of reform initiatives. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs play a key ...

2022

Turning crowds into communities: The collectives of online citizen science

Jérôme Baudry

Over the past two decades, a number of digital platforms have been developed with the aim of engaging citizens in scientific research projects. The success of these platforms depends in no small part on their ability to attract and retain participants, tur ...

2022

Exploring a Handwriting Programming Language for Educational Robots

Francesco Mondada, Taavet Kangur, Barbara Bruno, Laila Abdelsalam El-Hamamsy, Christian Giang, Vaios Papaspyros, Laura Mathex

Recently, introducing computer science and educational robots in compulsory education has received increasing attention. However, the use of screens in classrooms is often met with resistance, especially in primary school. To address this issue, this study ...

Springer, Cham2021

Understanding teacher design practices for digital inquiry-based science learning: the case of Go-Lab

Denis Gillet, Maria Jesus Rodriguez Triana

Designing and implementing online or digital learning material is a demanding task for teachers. This is even more the case when this material is used for more engaged forms of learning, such as inquiry learning. In this article, we give an informed accoun ...

2021

Science's Response to CoVID-19

Yimon Aye

CoVID-19 is a multi-symptomatic disease which has made a global impact due to its ability to spread rapidly, and its relatively high mortality rate. Beyond the heroic efforts to develop vaccines, which we do not discuss herein, the response of scientists a ...

WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH2021

Archiving the Leftovers of Science: Metadata and Histories of Scientific Institutions

Alina Volynskaya

In this article, I focus on digital scientific archives which are made up of the leftovers of science, such as drafts, obsolete instruments, photographs, documentation, etc. The artifacts exhibited in such collections were neither meant to be representatio ...

2021

Highlights of the Science and Life of Peter Varga (1946-2018)

Wolf-Dieter Schneider

Peter Varga has passed on October 27, 2018. His pioneering discoveries of chemical resolution at the atomic scale on surface alloys, atomic resolution of ultrathin alkali halides, nucleation of bcc iron in ultrathin films, and the microscopic structure of ...

2020

Increasing the relevance of science for practice and practice for science: Quantitative empirical insights

Claudia Rebeca Binder Signer, Livia Bianca Fritz, Ralph Hansmann

We present results of a survey conducted with researchers and practitioners involved in a Swiss National Research Programme on steering energy consumption. We analyse what motivates practitioners and researchers to engage in a collaborative research projec ...

2020

Prepare Scientists to Engage in Science‐Policy

Julia Schmale

There is a dire need for deeper science‐policy engagement to face recent developments such as entering into the Anthropocene and our dependence as a species on technological and scientific advancements. However, there is a lack of preparedness and training ...

2020

The organisation of science: topics, incentives and funding

Omar Ballester Gonzalez

Ever since the links between the development of new technologies and economic growth became evident, researchers have attempted to study how the creation of knowledge fosters progress. If pushing the frontier of knowledge has an impact on progress and well ...

EPFL2020

Building blocks for commodity augmented reality-based molecular visualization and modeling in web browsers

Luciano Andres Abriata

For years, immersive interfaces using virtual and augmented reality (AR) for molecular visualization and modeling have promised a revolution in the way how we teach, learn, communicate and work in chemistry, structural biology and related areas. However, m ...

2020