Introduction: STEM education’s impact on student learning outcomes is nuanced, with differentiated effects across outcome types and academic levels.Methods: This study uses meta-analysis to systematically analyse 66 experimental and quasi-experimental studies on STEM education published in international English journals from 2000–2024.Results: The study finds that: (1) Subgroup analysis showed that STEM education had the most significant impact on cognitive outcomes in high school (d = 0.58) and reduced heterogeneity (I² = 62.1%), while the overall effect size was exploratory due to construct diversity. (2) Overall, STEM education has a moderate effect on students’ learning outcomes, but the overall moderate effect size masks these key differences. (3) The effect of STEM education on students’ learning outcomes is influenced by the moderating variables of sample size, academic level, subjects, experimental period and teaching method.Discussion: These findings highlight the need to tailor STEM interventions to outcome type and academic level, strengthening the integration of theory and practice in STEM education.

Virtual experiments are widely used in the field of education for their low cost, strong interaction, hyperspace and safety advantages. While some researchers have analysed the impact of virtual technologies such as AR or VR on teaching effectiveness, few researchers have comprehensively explored the impact of virtual experiments on students’ learning effectiveness. In view of this, this study uses meta-analysis method to systematically review 62 experimental and quasi-experimental studies on the educational applications of virtual experiments published in international journals to systematically examine the impact of virtual experiments on students’ learning effectiveness. The results of the study find that the impact of virtual experiments on learning effectiveness is influenced by five moderating variables (subjects, academic level, sample size, experimental period, and virtual forms). Based on this, this study makes recommendations in three areas: the design, conduct and evaluation of virtual experiments.

Due to the seriousness of COVID-19, masks are considered to be as a key and effective device to cut off the spread of viruses and are widely used by people, such as doctors and patients. Hundreds of millions of masks used worldwide in daily life will inevitably cause huge pollution and damage to the environment. However, existing research has not yet provided a method to simultaneously evaluate the economic, environmental, and social aspects of sustainable design of masks, which brings great barriers and challenges for designers to make sustainability decisions on masks and consumers’ behavioral decisions on mask purchases. Consequently, on the basis of principles of sustainability evaluation of masks, this work evaluates ten masks of different materials (including two newly designed masks) by using a novel hybrid of rank-sum ratio and entropy weight method. The results indicate that some disposable masks also show better sustainability than reusable masks, and in addition, the integrated rank-sum ratio and entropy weight method can effectively realize the sustainability evaluation of masks. The main contribution is to furnish an effective decision-making reference for sustainability evaluation of masks while greatly reducing the negative impacts of masks on the environment during the epidemic.

Urban parks are important urban public spaces that guarantee people recreation, create positive emotions and relieve stress. Emerging research has shown that natural soundscapes are associated with restorative landscapes in urban parks. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on the use of physiological indexes to evaluate the effects of natural sounds versus human-based sounds on stress relief. In this study, the three physiological indexes of skin conductance level, heart rate and heart rate variability were collected in Fuzhou West Lake Park with the help of Ergo LAB data platform, and a soundscape perception evaluation questionnaire was used to assess the degree of soundscape perceptions in the sample sites. The differences in the stress relieving effects of different urban park environments were analysed by applying the median test, the Wilcoxon test was applied to analyse the effects of soundscapes and urban park environments on relieving stress, and regression analysis was used to identify the important factors of restorative soundscapes. The results found that urban park environments provide a certain degree of stress relief, but the stress relieving effects of different urban park environments vary and that natural spaces play an important role in relieving stress. Urban park soundscapes are key to restorative environmental design, with natural sounds such as birdsong and stream sound being important factors of restorative soundscapes.