Pedagogical research over the past decade has shown that chemistry courses have high failure rates and low accessibility. The implementation of novel active-learning approaches has great potential to offset these trends. Fundamental concepts that serve as "pinch points" are ripe targets for designing innovative, gamified course materials…

Comic strips on newspapers, magazines and Internet are one of the most accessible materials that may be used in science classroom as instructional tool. However, it is sometimes difficult to find and adapt appropriate comic strips useful for instructional purposes, because most of them are irrelevant. The purpose of this study is to develop and…

ScienceComics project originally involved a set of theatre performances that sought to highlight the importance of materials by exploring what happens when one uses the "wrong" material. As part of this early work, two plays were created that featured a young alien girl, called Selenia, who could change materials. In this article, the…

Cartoons are part of a much larger effort by chemical educators to introduce activities to enhance learning and student participation. There are a variety of cartoon types used in teaching that have been evaluated and discussed within the chemical education community including caricatures, comics, and concept cartoons. This article focuses on the…

Unmotivated, underachieving students pose a huge challenge for teachers. One way to motivate and stimulate student interest in a topic is to use humor. Humor can help students make new connections in learning and improves retention of information (Garner 2006). In this article, the authors describe how they integrated art and literature with…

"The Chemedian and the Crazy Football Match" is a comic strip developed by the authors to bring humor to aspects of the UK primary science curriculum. The comic strip was tested in six English primary school classes (years 3-5; ages 7-10); over 150 children participated in the project, together with six teachers. Children found the comic…

A wonderful way to engage science students is to make them think a demonstration is not turning out the way the instructor intended. Basically, throw a little humor into teaching, and they will be hooked. Described in this article is a demonstration that uses Milk of Magnesia (MOM) as a visual and humorous method to review equilibrium chemistry…

A professor explains how he uses cartoons in teaching science. (PR)