Students' beliefs about their ability to improve their intelligence (known as mindset) likely have more impact on their academic outcomes when engaging in challenging learning environments, such as introductory undergraduate chemistry courses. To date, little research has been conducted on the chemistry-specific aspects of intelligence which…

Student engagement is an important consideration when incorporating active learning activities into a classroom. To facilitate the large-scale assessment of students' engagement in activities, a survey measure must first be developed and evaluated. Therefore, the goal of this study was to create a self-report measure of student engagement for use…

Although active learning strategies are being incorporated into many higher-education STEM courses, not all students benefit from these activities to the same extent. As these types of activities are designed to engage students in their learning, differences in student engagement may explain some of the differences in learning outcomes. However,…

Identifying effective methods of assessment and developing robust assessments are key areas of research in chemistry education. This research is needed to evaluate instructional innovations and curricular reform. In this primer, we advocate for the use of a type of assessment, ordered multiple-choice (OMC), across postsecondary chemistry. OMC…

Across science disciplines, light is a common tool for measuring, characterizing, and catalysing molecules and molecular processes. Despite the ubiquity of light-based tools, little research has been done to investigate how students understand light and light-matter interactions (LMI). This topic is typically first introduced in first-year…

Since 2013, the number of publications on flipped learning within chemistry have steadily increased. However, most of these studies focus on flipped course reforms within individual institutions, while the outcomes of any learning environment are dependent on how the environment is structured and the degree to which students interact with its…

Identity has been theorized to aid in student persistence within STEM disciplines. In this study, science and chemistry identity were defined as being recognized as a science or chemistry person within the classroom. To generalize the effects that identity has on student persistence, a measurable construct must be defined, operationalized, and…

The level of students' engagement during active learning activities conducted in small groups is important to understanding the effectiveness of these activities. The Interactive-Constructive-Active-Passive (ICAP) framework is a way to determine the cognitive engagement of these groups by analyzing the conversations that occur while student groups…

Chemistry education research has increasingly considered the role of affect when investigating chemistry learning environments over the past decade. Despite its popularity in educational spheres, mindset has been understudied from a chemistry-specific perspective. Mindset encompasses one's beliefs about the ability to change intelligence with…

Active learning environments have been shown to be beneficial for student learning; however, including such activities can be limited by the class time available. One method that can provide more opportunities for active learning during face-to-face class time is the flipped learning approach. However, studies on the impacts of flipped learning…

Identity has been proposed as a mechanism to increase persistence within Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs. To assess the impact of identity on STEM persistence, measures that produce valid and reliable data within a given STEM discipline need to be employed. Therefore, this study developed and evaluated…

To date, the efficacy of virtual experiments is not well-understood. To better understand what differences may exist between a hands-on learning environment and a virtual learning environment, three experiments were chosen for investigation. For each experiment, approximately half of the students completed a hands-on version of the experiment, and…

The Science Motivation Questionnaire II (SMQ II) was developed to measure aspects of student motivation in college-level science courses. Items on the SMQ II are structured such that the word 'science' can be replaced with any discipline title (e.g., chemistry) to produce a discipline-specific measure of student motivation. Since its original…

This methodological paper examines current conceptions of reliability in chemistry education research (CER) and provides recommendations for moving beyond the current reliance on reporting coefficient alpha (a) as reliability evidence without regard to its appropriateness for the research context. To help foster a better understanding of…

As the field of chemistry education moves toward greater inclusion and increased participation by underrepresented minorities, standards for investigating the differential impacts and outcomes of learning environments have to be considered. While quantitative methods may not be capable of generating the in-depth nuances of qualitative methods,…