To foster the connection between biochemistry and the supporting prerequisite concepts, a collection of activities that explicitly link general and organic chemistry concepts to biochemistry ideas was written and either assigned as pre-class work or as recitation activities. We assessed student learning gains after using these activities alone, or…

Various reasons are attributed to poor student performance in physical science courses such as lack of motivation, lack of ability, and/or the overall difficulty of these courses. One overlooked reason is a lack of self-awareness as to preparation level. Through a study over a two-year period, students at all levels (freshman through M.S.) of a…

Organic Chemistry is a required course for programs in chemistry, biology, and many health science careers. It has historically been considered a highly challenging course with significant failure rates. As with many science disciplines, the teaching of Organic Chemistry has traditionally focused on unstructured exposition-centered delivery of…

This study examined the regulation of out-of-class time invested in the academic activities associated with a physics class for 20 consecutive semesters. The academic activities of 1676 students were included in the study. Students reported investing a semester average of 6.5 ± 2.9 h out of class per week. During weeks not containing an…

The connection between high school chemistry pedagogical experiences and introductory college chemistry performance has been a topic researched in published science education literature since the 1920s. However, analysis techniques have limited the generalizability of these results. This review discusses the findings of a large-scale,…