Student-generated drawings are known to be effective in building and revealing students' conceptions of chemistry. Some chemistry concepts, moreover, include changes and processes that cannot be merely represented by static drawings. Computer-based animations are needed to represent the dynamics. In this study, 25 chemistry student teachers, who…

During the last three decades, chemical education in Slovenia has developed mainly in two chemistry education research groups, one located at the University of Ljubljana and the other at the University of Maribor. The present study aims to identify research papers in the field of chemical education published between 1991 and 2019 through a…

This paper describes two studies comparing students' explanations of an oxidation-reduction reaction after viewing the chemical demonstration and one of two different particulate-level computer animations. In the first study, the two animations differed primarily in the complexity of the visual images. Students viewing the more simplified…

The mathematical models that describe enzyme kinetics are invaluable predictive tools in numerous scientific fields. However, the daunting mathematical language used to describe kinetic behavior can be confusing for life science students; they often struggle to conceptualize and relate the mathematical representations to the molecular phenomena…

Given that students are constantly communicating and documenting special experiences in their social and private lives with digital devices, we suggest that this behavior could be used to record and deepen learning experiences-such as visualizing reactions at the molecular level-in a chemistry class. An example would be the creation of stop-motion…

In this reply to Elon Langbeheim's response to an article recently published in this journal, authors Smith and Villarreal identify several types of general chemistry students' misconceptions concerning the concept of particle position during physical change. They focus their response on one of the misconceptions identified as such: Given a solid…

We describe a mobile augmented reality (AR) experience called Atom Tracker designed to help middle school students better understand the cycling of matter in ecosystems with a focus on the concept of conservation of matter and the processes of photosynthesis and respiration. Location-based AR allows students to locate virtual "hotspots,"…

In this qualitative study, we examined how a group of seventeen first semester General Chemistry students responded when they were shown contrasting molecular animations of a reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction between solid copper and aqueous silver nitrate for which they first viewed a video of the actual experiment. The animations contrasted…

Animations of molecular structure and dynamics are repeatedly applied to support student comprehension in the theoretical ideas of chemistry. However, students' understanding the dynamics of the phenomena is directly related to the understanding of teachers as instructors. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate how the features of three…

Student performance in a flipped classroom with an animation-based content knowledge development system for the bottom third of the incoming first year college students was compared to that in a traditional lecture-based teaching method. 52% of these students withdrew from the traditionally taught General Chemistry course, compared to 22% in a…

The concept of specificity of enzyme action can potentially be abstract for some students as they fail to appreciate how the three-dimensional configuration of enzymes and the active sites confer perfect fit for specific substrates. In science text books, the specificity of enzyme-substrate binding is typically likened to the action of a lock and…

Students' understanding of the orbital concept has been subject to considerable research and debate and often found at variance with a quantum mechanical ideal. Could it be the case that orbitals as actually used by practising chemists in teaching and research also differ from that ideal? Our experience shows that this might often be the case.…

An animation and accompanying activity has been developed to help students visualize how dispersion interactions arise. The animation uses the gecko's ability to walk on vertical surfaces to illustrate how dispersion interactions play a role in macroscale outcomes. Assessment of student learning reveals that students were able to develop…

Why is chemistry so difficult? A seminal paper by Johnstone (1982) offered an explanation for why science in general, and chemistry in particular, is so difficult to learn. He proposed that an expert in chemistry thinks at three levels; the macro (referred to as the observational level in this article), the sub-micro (referred to as the molecular…

Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the molecular unit of intracellular energy and it is the product of oxidative phosphorylation of cellular respiration uses in cellular processes. The study explores the growth of the misconception levels amongst the learners and evaluates the effectiveness of animation model over traditional methods. The data…