Resonance is a crucial concept in Organic Chemistry that enables both deriving chemical properties from molecular structures and predicting reactions by considering electron density distribution. Despite its importance for problem-solving and learning success, learners encounter various difficulties with this concept. Although prior research…

The alignment of teaching and assessment in chemistry courses is critical for the practice of science and positive student learning outcomes. This paper addresses how instructors can align what they do in class with assessments across topics to improve students' understanding and explanations of chemical phenomena. We drew on the foundations of…

A comparative study on the performance and on the perception of two groups of students involved in a peer review activity on the writing of chemical laboratory reports is reported. The first group participated in a compulsory activity, while the second one participated on a voluntary basis. This study was aimed at determining whether the overall…

Organic chemistry presents a significant obstacle for students seeking entry into health-related professions. Students' ability to develop effective study approaches is an important predictor of success in the course. Herein, we report an investigation utilizing an OCH-adjusted M-ASSIST instrument to assess possible changes in students' study…

Organic chemistry is the study of organic compounds containing hydrocarbons and their derivatives. It is similar to inorganic chemistry in terms of the cognitive model. However, the vast number of organic compounds has added to the difficulty in learning organic chemistry with compressed class hours in engineering majors. The integration of the…

The use of social media platforms to promote social interaction in a digital classroom is a common approach used by many educators. However, implementing such a platform is met with many challenges, the biggest being student shyness and reluctance in participating publicly. In this paper, we introduce the Supplementary Discourse (SD) model,…

Chemistry-specific informal science education (chemistry outreach) is widely practiced across all levels of the chemistry community. College students associated with American Chemical Society and Alpha Chi Sigma collegiate chapters are one population of chemistry outreach practitioners who reach upward of 1 million people every year. Previous…

Supporting students in building well-grounded explanations plays a crucial role in scientific practice. Research in organic chemistry education on students' mechanistic explanations, however, has revealed various challenges. When solving mechanistic tasks, students experience difficulties when (I) deriving implicit properties from structural…

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has become a fundamental tool in all areas of today's society, including higher education. Lessons cannot be envisaged without the use of tools such as computers, tablets or mobile devices. Many lecturers use audience response systems (ARS) to keep their classes engaged. ARS software…

Making connections among multiple visual representations is key to students' learning. This article considers two learning processes involved in connection making: explicit sense making of connections and implicit perceptual induction of connections. Instructional interventions support these processes via different problem types: sense-making…

Connection-making among multiple representations is a crucial but difficult competence in STEM learning. Prior research has focused on one type of learning process involved in connection-making: sense-making processes leading to conceptual understanding of connections. Yet, other research suggests that a second type of learning process is…

Chemical identity, the idea that every substance has at least one property that makes it unique and able to be differentiated from other substances, is core to the practice of chemistry. Such practice requires using properties to classify as well as to differentiate. Learning which substance properties are productive in chemical identity thinking…

Longitudinal studies can provide significant insights into how students develop competence in a topic or subject area over time. However, there are many barriers, such as retention of students in the study and the complexity of data analysis, that make these studies rare. Here, we present how a statistical framework, discrete-time survival…

The central goal of this qualitative research study was to uncover major implicit assumptions that students with different levels of training in the discipline apply when thinking and making decisions about chemical reactions used to make a desired product. In particular, we elicited different ways of conceptualizing why chemical reactions happen…

We report the results of a phenomenographic analysis of faculty beliefs about the purposes for teaching upper-division physical chemistry courses in the undergraduate curriculum. A purposeful sampling strategy was used to recruit a diverse group of faculty for interviews. Collectively, the participating faculty regularly teach or have taught…