As the 21st century progresses, we are increasingly reminded of the importance of and need for green chemistry, which also leads to the corresponding need for green chemistry education. The UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry developed a green chemistry laboratory curriculum-the "General Chemistry Green Curriculum" ("GC[superscript…

This review summarizes the corpus of literature discussing the science identity of college students from various racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. The purpose of this review is to understand what experiences afford or impede the development of college students' science identity and what strategies are effective for strengthening their…

A national survey of chemists (n = 174) explored the self-reported format and focus of postsecondary inorganic chemistry instructional laboratory curricula. Multiple instructional laboratory course formats were observed, including stand-alone inorganic chemistry instructional laboratory courses, inorganic chemistry laboratory instruction as a…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] Fifteen years ago, following recommendations from research on science education for prospective teachers and for students more broadly, "Physics and Everyday Thinking" introduced activities within an inquiry-based undergraduate physics course…

First-year undergraduate curricula and their delivery should assist students in the transition from previous learning experiences to learning in higher education. However, the so-called articulation gap or discontinuity between secondary and higher education has been identified as a key structural curriculum problem for first-year success in South…

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the importance of designing effective methods for remote teaching. At the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, instructors adapted to the necessity of remote laboratory instruction by creating choose-your-own-adventure-style video-based online experiments introduced…

The last class session of the academic term represents an excellent opportunity to solicit meaningful feedback from students who have just completed the course. To capitalize on the students' first-hand knowledge of their own experiences with our course and maximize the impact of the last class for our Canadian graduate-level genetics course, we…

We tested whether ChatGPT can play a role in designing field courses in higher education. In collaboration with ChatGPT, we developed two field courses; the first aimed at creating a completely new field trip, while the second was tailored to fit an existing university module, and then compared to the human module design. From our case studies,…

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…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] A level of curricular design, called "design tactics," is identified to fill a gap in the research literature between the broad principles that guide curriculum development and the detailed writing of specific activities and lessons. The use of…

The Human Anatomy & Physiology Society (HAPS) has published a set of learning outcomes to be used for curriculum design of a one-semester introductory physiology course. The outcomes are competency-based and are mapped to core concepts and skills students should develop as undergraduates. This paper is an introduction to how the physiology…

The fundamental structure of a typical mainstream two-semester organic chemistry course, populated mostly by life science majors and taught at universities throughout the United States, has changed little since the 1970s. However, much of the research on learning in organic chemistry has been devoted to characterizing student difficulties of…

This paper describes the master course design process at the largest institution of higher education in Colorado, USA. The master course design process demonstrated principles of backwards design and employed a team-based approach to course development. The course map was the primary vehicle for communicating the design of the course during…

Flipped instruction is not new and the literature is extensive with examples of flipped courses. However, there is a lack of studies with a structured, methodical approach to flipped design, implementation, and evaluation of its effectiveness. An upper division geology course was flipped to allow focus on higher-level concepts, especially…

As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic spread throughout the world, universities were faced with extraordinary challenges. Shelter-in-place orders were given, in-person classes were canceled, and at the University of California Irvine, instructors had less than 2 weeks to convert spring quarter classes from a face-to-face to an online format. A team-based…