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Background:Peripheral intravenous catheter (PIVC) insertion is an essential skill for nursing professionals. Nursing students face significant challenges in learning PIVC insertion due in part to limited opportunities for hands-on practice with real patients. Traditional training methods with low-fidelity task trainers lack variability and depend on costly consumable products. Purpose:To address this gap, a bimodal haptic feedback interface integrated into mixed reality was developed to simulate IV needle insertion under diverse conditions, creating a simulated learning environment to master tactile skills, hand-eye coordination, and anatomically accurate procedures. Guided by the New Theory of Disuse, the simulator was designed to promote repeated practice and retrieval, strengthening both the accessibility and accuracy of skill performance through targeted, interactive learning. Results:Students reported an improvement in confidence levels and success rate after using the bimanual haptic feedback mixed reality IV simulator. Conclusions:By integrating features such as patient-specific anatomical variability, realistic resistance feedback, and adaptive difficulty levels, virtual reality and haptic simulations can closely replicate the nuances of IV insertion in diverse clinical scenarios. 

Understanding experimental design (e.g. control of variable strategy or CVS) is foundational for scientific reasoning. Previous research has demonstrated that demonstrations with cognitive conflict (e.g. asking students to evaluate and explain different experimental designs) are effective in promoting children’s scientific reasoning, however, the implementation of this approach often requires significant instructional time and resources. This study reports the impact of a brief, scalable intervention on one component of scientific reasoning, understanding experimental design, by providing brief instruction on the control-of-variable strategy (CVS), embedded in a food science activity (popping popcorn). Threehundred and seven (307) 3rd-5th graders in the midwestern US participated in either a CVS intervention or a demonstration on the science of popcorn without a CVS intervention. Performance on a pre-activity test (involving identification of good and bad experiments) did not differ between conditions. By contrast, postactivity performance was significantly greater for classes who received the CVS intervention. Thus, a brief discussion of the CVS embedded within a food-science demonstration can have a meaningful impact on children’s understanding of conducting a quality experiment. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of a simple, low-cost intervention for CVS that is potentially scalable. 

Metacognition is awareness and control of thinking for learning. Strong metacognitive skills have the power to impact student learning and performance. While metacognition can develop over time with practice, many students struggle to meaningfully engage in metacognitive processes. In an evidence-based teaching guide associated with this paper ( https://lse.ascb.org/evidence-based-teaching-guides/student-metacognition ), we outline the reasons metacognition is critical for learning and summarize relevant research on this topic. We focus on three main areas in which faculty can foster students’ metacognition: supporting student learning strategies (i.e., study skills), encouraging monitoring and control of learning, and promoting social metacognition during group work. We distill insights from key papers into general recommendations for instruction, as well as a special list of four recommendations that instructors can implement in any course. We encourage both instructors and researchers to target metacognition to help students improve their learning and performance.