Scientific literacy is an increasingly important skill for today and tomorrow's citizens. Encapsulated in the definition of being scientifically literate, one must be knowledgeable about science and technology in context and be able to interpret and communicate the information well. Introductory science courses, like general chemistry, are key…

Students' negative perceptions of physical chemistry courses are well-known and are likely impacting their learning and performance in this upper-division course for majors. The syllabus can be the first interaction students have with a course and instructor and can be central to the expectations student set for the learning experience. While…

This article describes a laboratory course designed for nonmajors with a focus on food chemistry. The course can be delivered in a traditional format or in a fully remote, asynchronous format. The course is designed for students to develop an understanding of how chemists view the world and how chemists generate knowledge. Food chemistry was…

Student success is often treated as an observed variable, or something that you can measure directly with a single instrument. Single course outcomes such as final course grade or learning gain on an assessment have become synonymous with success in undergraduate science education research. Continually relying on these narrow course outcomes to…

We reported a redesign of a physical chemistry laboratory course (CHEM 166) for our chemistry majors at the University of Vermont carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic. We started to teach this course after a curriculum reform, which split an upper-division undergraduate laboratory course into physical and analytical chemistry laboratories. To…

The science laboratory learning environment has been a distinctive area in science education since the 19th century. Unfortunately, students are generally not aware of what science instructors expect from laboratory experiences, and far too often, the undergraduate science laboratory curriculum lacks explicit, well-defined goals. Science…

We present an investigation into the interdisciplinary role of physics in a physics-for-nonphysicists course at Pomona College. This work is guided by prior research into introductory physics for life science (IPLS) courses, but attends to significant differences in the scope and context of this course. We interviewed enrolled students, physics…

Course syllabi are a required component of college and university courses. Syllabi present both broader course structuring practices, are a valuable "first impression" of what instructors want to offer their students, and are used as tools in course design. While best teaching practices suggest specific recommendations for syllabi…

This article describes a general education course offering, Physics and the Arts. During the development of this course, physics and arts faculty collaborated closely. We cover the usual physics phenomena for such a course--light, color, and sound--in addition to gravity, equilibrium, and spacetime. Goals of the course are to increase students'…

Over the course of four years, we have researched and transformed a key course in the career of an undergraduate physics major--junior-level electricity and magnetism. With the aim of educating our majors based on a more complete understanding of the cognitive and conceptual challenges of upper-division courses, we used principles of active…

During 2007 all Danish university curricula were reformulated to explicitly state course objectives due to the adoption of a new Danish national grading scale which stipulated that grades were to be given based on how well students meet explicit course objectives. The Faculties of Science at University of Aarhus and University of Southern Denmark…

The purpose of this study was to understand one case of undergraduate inquiry-based instruction through the words and actions of students and instructors. The data sources included fieldnotes from 16 of 29 classes, two sets of student and instructor interviews (beginning and end of the semester), and a collection of artifacts, such as the…

Undergraduate research experiences have been shown to enhance the educational experience and retention of college students, especially those from underrepresented populations. However, many challenges still exist relative to building community among students navigating large institutions. We developed a novel course called "Entering…