The interdisciplinary nature of food makes it an effective teaching vehicle in many fields. This article shows specifically how flavor and food fermentation, two topics not usually featured in the undergraduate STEM curriculum, can inspire a powerful interdisciplinary learning experience. Importantly, because of their accessible nature and…

This study developed a complexometric titration simulation program based on LabVIEW. With built-in approximation and rigorous algorithms, the program can easily simulate and plot a single or a group of complexometric titration curves. On the basis of this program, we developed and implemented an online course to guide undergraduates to (i) compare…

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of an inquiry-based laboratory for sophomore-level organic chemistry into a mostly cookbook, existing laboratory curriculum. For the laboratory, students were required to generate their own procedures and use their own recorded data from prior laboratory assignments to identify an…

Active learning has often been reported to improve student outcomes in STEM courses. However, there are barriers to its implementation, and it is challenging to include this approach in large classrooms with fixed seating. This investigation explores the development of a novel approach in which the class contact time was reallocated for a general…

An undergraduate-level Computational Chemistry project was incorporated initially into a Physical Chemistry course and then into the laboratory curriculum in the subsequent application. Before the introduction of the project, the lectures covered quantum chemistry, spectroscopy, and kinetics while simultaneously including computational chemistry…

Insights and methods from the chemical sciences are directly relevant to global challenges such as climate change, renewable energy generation and storage, water purification, and food production. However, these connections are often opaque to students in general chemistry courses, who may get lost in the weeds of stoichiometry, VSEPR, and gas…

An active-learning concurrent preparatory general chemistry course was adopted to replace a prerequisite course that lacked effectiveness in improving student outcomes. Our previous study showed that the concurrent course increased final exam performance and retention in a cohort of students. This paper studies the course modality impact of the…

Over the past 20 years, significant effort has been devoted to advancing the modular approach to teaching chemistry laboratory courses. The development and implementation of two modules are presented here for teaching a second-semester physical chemistry laboratory course using the modular approach: an inquiry-based module concerning proteins and…

Across the United Kingdom Higher Education system, the percentage of white students attaining a first or upper second-class degree exceeds the that of Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) students. This is known as the BAME degree awarding gap. Awarding gaps are also seen at the module level. The BAME module awarding gap is defined as the difference…

Recently there has been a renewed interest in the development and use of pedagogical games, as they provide an interesting approach to the appropriation of knowledge in the context of active learning. However, most didactic games fail to completely implement a cycle of reflection and action, thereby fostering mostly lower-order thinking skills and…

For the past nine years, we have been offering an interdisciplinary course for science majors: The Biology and Chemistry of Brewing. This course is primarily laboratory- and inquiry-based; from a total of 24 h of student/instructor contact time, approximately 6 h are devoted to lecture, and the other 18 h are divided between laboratory exercises,…

Development of benchtop, portable Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and infrared (IR) spectrometers has opened up opportunities for creating university-high school partnerships that provide high school students with hands-on experience with NMR and IR instruments. With recent changes to the international baccalaureate chemistry…

Outlines the development of a curriculum in molecular science that prepares those students who have a deep understanding of chemistry concepts and principles, have collaboration skills, are able to use modern technology, and can write about chemistry. (DDR)