News by Subject Education

Brigham Young University life sciences professors have found that giving students access to their personal biological data has a profound impact on their learning experience. In a summary of their experiment, published in high-ranking scientific journal PLOS ONE, the researchers report students with access to data about their own microbiome -- the trillions of tiny microorganisms that live in a person's gut, mouth and skin -- are significantly more engaged and more interested in course material.

The ability of babies to differentiate emotional expressions appears to develop during their first six months. But do they really recognise emotion or do they only distinguish the physical characteristics of faces and voices? Researchers from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, have just provided an initial answer to this question, measuring the ability of six-month-old babies to make a connection between a voice expressing happiness or anger and the emotional expression on a face.

Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration recently released new research on its flagship Smart Course, Habitable Worlds, published in the peer-reviewed journal, Astrobiology. The study found that its student-centered, exploration-focused design resulted in high course grades and demonstrable mastery of content.

A first-of-its-kind study by researchers at Arizona State University shows that in the college biology classroom, men perceive themselves as smarter, even when compared to women whose grades prove they are just as smart. The study, published April 4 in the journal Advances in Physiology Education, shows that gender greatly impacts students' perceptions of their own intelligence, particularly when they compare themselves to others.

Swansea University Egyptology lecturer Dr Ken Griffin has found a depiction of one of the most famous pharaoh's in history Hatshepsut (one of only a handful of female pharaohs) on an object in the Egypt Centre stores, which had been chosen for an object handling session.