Our goal as educators should be to help our students become well positioned to achieve future success. To develop effective strategies for accomplishing this objective, we must first understand the root causes of success. Thus, to best serve undergraduate students who are taking organic chemistry courses, we must understand the attributes that…

Organic Chemistry I presents challenges to many students pursuing diverse fields of study, oftentimes curtailing further progress in those fields. The ability to identify students at risk of unsuccessful course outcomes may lead to improved success rates by offering tailored resources to those students. Previously identified predictors include…

Non-science majors often lack motivation to take science courses required for their graduation, because these courses are usually taught in a lecture format and are disconnected from their everyday life and needs related to future careers. This two-phase action research, utilizing argumentative writing (AW) supported with online simulation, was…

Argumentative writing advances students' understanding of scientific concepts, ability to communicate, and scientific literacy. However, it remains unclear which components of argumentative writing drive such advancement. Further, most studies on argumentative writing have focused on students majoring in science, rather than in the nonsciences.…

This paper aims to explore (1) students' chemistry self-efficacy beliefs and metacognitive skills during problem solving in chemistry, (2) a potential significant difference of chemistry self-efficacy beliefs and levels of metacognitive skills in accordance with subject fields and, (3) the level of chemistry self-efficacy beliefs as a predictor of…

A growing body of research suggests that student-centered teaching methods are associated with positive learning outcomes for undergraduate students. Yet, the extent of their use and factors leading to their adoption in fields, such as chemistry, continue to be under-explored. Utilizing survey data collected during 2015, we begin to fill this gap,…

This quantitative exploratory study investigated factors related to the fail rate of first-year students in Introduction to General Chemistry courses (CHEM 1xx) at a mid-sized public research university. This course represents a gateway course for many scientific, medical, and healthcare majors. The sample consisted of 595 undergraduate students…

Making decisions, reasoning, and constructing arguments with scientific evidence are essential skills for all members of society, especially in a world facing complex socioscientific issues such as climate change and pandemics. Argumentation is a complex linguistic practice but little is known about how students from diverse language backgrounds…

Over 40 years of research, concept maps have shown that they are beneficial for learning. However, much of this research has been conducted in laboratory settings. Although there are a few studies conducted in the classroom, there is little understanding of the instructional efficacy of using different types of concept maps. In a between-subjects…

First-semester general chemistry is a known "gatekeeper" course due to its high failure rate. These higher education courses are taken by students who for the most part are regularly admitted freshmen, yet many struggle to succeed. In this investigation researchers from six higher-education institutions of varied sizes with student…

The 1st step in successfully intervening with students who may fail a course is to identify them as early as possible in the semester. The objective of this study was to create a model to predict student performance in FDSC 4304, the required capstone Food Chemistry class, using academic performance in prerequisite courses as potential predictors.…

Chemical representations serve as a communication tool not only in exchanges between scientists but also in chemistry lessons. The goals of the present study were to measure the extent of student teachers' knowledge about chemical representations, focusing on chemical formulae and structures in particular, and to explore which factors related to…

In chemistry, lack of academic preparation and math ability have been offered as explanations as to why women seem to enroll, perform, and graduate at lower levels than men. In this paper, we explore the alternative possibility that the gender gap in chemistry instead originates from differential gender effects of academic factors on students'…

One primary goal of many science courses is for students to learn creative problem-solving skills; that is, integrating concepts, explaining concepts in a problem context, and using concepts to solve problems. However, what science instructors see is that many students, even those having excellent SAT/ACT and Advanced Placement scores, struggle in…

This study is on correlation between entry qualification and performance in A'level chemistry at the school of Basic and remedial studies, Yobe State University, Damaturu. The grade in chemistry at the West African Examination Council (WAEC) or National Examination Council (NECO) is the predictor while the criterion is the grade earned in the…