Recent research emphasizes the need for a more sustained interaction of schools with universities and research institutions. For example, informal after-school programs integrated into the school curriculum can provide opportunities for meaningful interaction with researchers in active learning settings. At the physics department of University of…

Laboratory work in chemistry has been extensively researched in the last decade but the gap between research and practice is still broad. This "Perspective" shares 10 guiding principles relating to university laboratory education, drawing on research over the last decade. Written with an audience of practitioners in mind, the…

Remote delivery approaches to laboratory courses in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic have included a spectrum spanning passive options such as providing students with prerecorded videos of experiments to replacing in-person laboratory experiences with immersive virtual reality environments. While interactive activities that require students…

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial for an introductory course in biochemistry to move from in-person instruction to total remote learning. There are four transferable skills in the course: problem-solving, laboratory psychomotor skills, data analysis and interpretation skills, and presentation skills. Since all lab buildings were…

We have developed a curriculum for the organic chemistry laboratory in which students draw on authentic usage of spectroscopy, spectrometry, and computational chemistry to explain chemical phenomena. This curriculum, which has been continuously refined over a decade, has been explored by many thousands of students and is scalable to small and…

A cooperative-learning jigsaw-style activity was developed to create opportunities for introductory organic chemistry students to discuss and decipher [superscript 1]H NMR spectra. Students cooperatively interpreted spectra that contained both pure and mixed solvents, building consensus through explanation and argumentation on what each spectrum…

This research developed learning activities for students to explore and connect the concepts of acid-base titration, equivalence points, pK[subscript a], and molar absorption coefficients. Polyphenolic compounds consisting of p-coumaric acid (CMA), caffeic acid (CFA), and 3,4,5-trihydroxycinnamic acid (3,4,5-THCA) were selected as study models.…

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is a student-centered teaching technique that promotes engagement through higher-order thinking, collaboration, and creativity. This study examines the impact of IBL levels on students' interest, motivation, and engagement. Three levels of IBL (traditional, structured, and guided) were implemented in an introductory…

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…

Herein we propose the implementation of an "escape room" activity to reinforce chemistry-related concepts for students of the Bachelor of Arts and Fashion. In this work, a combined online and offline activity is developed, easily adaptable to different environments. The online activity consists of 5 blocks of multiple-quiz questions…

Practicing chemists use models, diagrams, symbols, and figures to represent phenomena which cannot be detected by the human senses. Although research suggests that these external representations (ERs) can also be used to address the challenges that students have in learning chemistry, it is not clear how instructors' use of ERs aligns with their…

This study's general theme revolves around practical work in chemical education, and its scope is the employment of a novel inquiry strategy combined with a new openness level. We investigate how the controlled positive error, a new device for inquiry activities developed by us, affects undergraduate students' experience of an experiment and…

Universities are recognizing the need to prepare graduates to think conceptually and have the ability to take on complex, real-world problems. Strategies to assess conceptual knowledge are limited and often require more time and effort to complete than is accessible for most undergraduate courses. Card sorting is a very broad technique for…

An undergraduate-level Computational Chemistry project was incorporated initially into a Physical Chemistry course and then into the laboratory curriculum in the subsequent application. Before the introduction of the project, the lectures covered quantum chemistry, spectroscopy, and kinetics while simultaneously including computational chemistry…

Integrating authentic research practices into introductory laboratory courses to prepare tomorrow's scientists has become increasingly prevalent over the past decade. However, an incomplete understanding of the nature of science (NOS) and authentic scientific inquiry (SI) precludes higher-level learning in undergraduate research experiences. In…