Improved metacognitive thinking can impact student’s success. A novel homework method called Solved Problem Analysis (SPA) was developed with the intent to foster metacognitive thinking. It was hypothesized that supporting metacognition would lead to increased performance on in-class exams and the ACS final exam. Results showed SPA was effective at increasing performance on both. In order to more directly measure student’s metacognitive thinking, a knowledge survey was implemented to measure the difference between student’s perceived understanding of the material and their actual performance. These knowledge surveys showed students were able to predict how much of the material they understood. Monitoring one’s thinking is an important part of metacognition. This cognitive monitoring can be mimicked in study group interactions. The effect of self-assembled study groups on student exam performance was also examined, where it was found that self-assembled study groups did not effectively increase exam performance.

Tick-borne diseases are caused by a group of pathogenic microorganisms which are transmitted between animal and human population by vector which is most frequently tick. Evaluation of danger and perils of these diseases is important due to prevention and monitoring of current situation development. The most common tick-borne diseases in the Czech Republic are borreliosis, tick-borne encephalitis and ehrlichiosis. Rarely can we encounter bartonellosis, babesiosis, rickettsiosis and tularemia. All these diseases can have serious consequences and in critical cases they can result in death of the infected person. One of the basic and the most important of preventive measures which lower the risk of the infection by any tick-borne disease is prevention of tick encounter and eventually vaccination. Due to continual global warming we can expect that in near future ticks will spread even to locations which have been so far not suitable for their development. We can expect that we will even more frequently encounter tick-borne diseases - including diseases which were formerly not found in our territory or were very rare. As a part of health education it will be needed more to get known basic information of tick-borne diseases and their prevention. Different educational centres are an ideal place for...