Global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic highlight the need for visionary innovations in chemical education. We recently deigned a new learning environment called "ZuKon 2030", which addresses sustainability from a chemical perspective while simultaneously introducing students to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the…

Calorimetry is a central concept in the first semester general chemistry curriculum, and constant pressure (coffee-cup) calorimetry is a common experiment in the laboratory. However, constant volume (bomb) calorimetry is traditionally reserved for the physical chemistry laboratory. This article describes the advantages of incorporating bomb…

Investigating the optical properties of various chemical compounds using UV-vis spectrophotometers is an essential part of education in chemistry. However, commercial spectrophotometers are usually treated as "magic black boxes", where the dominant majority of optical elements are hidden "under the hood". This often limits…

Undergraduate-level laboratory experiments that integrate multidisciplinary chemistry concepts into a single activity are very appealing and thought-provoking for chemistry students. Here, we use the oscillating chemical reaction to introduce students to the analytical detection concept. The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is employed as a simple…

During the COVID-19 pandemic we developed an activity that encourages engagement with scientific reading and helps students to improve their reading skills as a complement to the glycobiology section of an undergraduate course of biological chemistry. Using "Genially," an online platform for gamification and self-taught learning, we…

There are many factors that can negatively impact student learning, including stress which impacts memory and overall well-being. A potential tool for educators to reduce stress and improve well-being is to use contemplative practices in the classroom, such as mindfulness and gratitude. In this Activity, we integrated voluntary daily mindfulness…

Kombucha, a popular probiotic beverage, contains detectable concentrations of ethyl alcohol. To be sold as a nonalcoholic product, alcohol concentrations in kombucha must be shown to be less than 0.5% by volume. This paper describes the use of an inexpensive, commercially available sensor to reliably and accurately measure alcohol concentrations…

Metal-air battery technology is a promising new energy storage solution in the green energy economy but also an excellent tool to educate students on the working principles of batteries. A simple yet powerful construction of a metal-air battery is shown, which consists of a plastic mint box, a cathode, an anode, and an electrolyte. Furthermore,…

There is an overwhelming consensus that sustained opportunities for teachers' professional learning is critical for student success, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the nature, substance, and format of K-12 teachers' opportunities for professional learning necessarily shifted. District administrators, focused on maintaining the safest possible…

"The Framework for K-12 Science Education" and the Next Generation Science Standards require teachers to integrate engineering design into K-12 science teaching. However, many teachers have no formal preparation in engineering design and how to integrate it into science instruction. Furthermore, few models exist for preparing teachers in…

There is an urgent call for science and STEM teachers to incorporate practices for equity-centered environments, social justice-orientations, criticality and other practices that promote system change. Yet this demand occurs against the backdrop marginalization of teachers' from having a say in the planning, teaching, and assessments in their own…

Teaching and learning relies on age-appropriate, credible formal (e.g., textbooks, textbook supplements) and informal (e.g., trade-books) curricular texts. Previous research traced American publishers' self-censorship about human evolution within twentieth-century textbooks. This study, informed by the latest scientific understandings, engaged in…

The discovery of frog abnormalities by students on a school field trip in 1995 sparked hundreds of scientific studies in search of the cause of abnormality. This Socio-Scientific Issue has been used as an inquiry-based learning exercise for training in the practice of science, but it is also well-suited to teaching the nature of science. Our goal…

This paper describes a case study of an online physics laboratory course implemented for 254 engineering students at Walailak University in Thailand in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The laboratory sequence was designed based on the United Kingdom Professional Standards Framework and covered eight experiments on fundamental concepts of motion,…

Much research attention has been focused on learning through game playing. However, very little has been focused on student learning through game making, especially in science. Moreover, none of the studies on learning through making games has presented an account of how students engage in the process of game design in real time. The present study…