Preparatory or bridging courses are widespread and have a long tradition at universities. They are designed to increase students' academic success -- in particular of students with low prior knowledge -- and to reduce dropout rates. However, critics of these short and compact bridging courses complain that preparatory courses are not able to fill…

In electrochemistry, the concept of a reference electrode is fundamental. Introductory courses might mention the standard hydrogen electrode (SHE), its working principle, and its theoretical design; however, chances are that students will never have the opportunity to work with one. A hydrogen electrode should be a device readily available at the…

An increased public knowledge of the health benefits of unsaturated fats has resulted in a surge of different cooking oils. Intense advertising of various oil brands claiming to provide the best dietary recommendations often leaves buyers unclear of what their best choices are. Herein, we describe a research-based project for upper-level…

Creativity has become an increasingly important competence in today's rapidly changing times. It is a central aspect of social development, but it is hardly discussed in schools and often neglected in the natural sciences. In order to promote creativity in science teaching in a targeted way, it is important to understand the perspectives and views…

High school students find reaction stoichiometry and the concept of the mole hard to comprehend. Teachers are well aware of the importance of teaching the mole concept and also the difficulty associated with it. In an attempt to improve the understanding of the mole concept with reduced difficulty, an atomic model kit that provides a hands-on…

This article reports the design of a scientific board game, named "Element Enterprise Tycoon" (EET), which creates a scenario combining chemical elements, techniques, and products in daily life. The game cards are designed to motivate students not only to retrieve information about chemical elements, but also to be proficient in…

Organic Chemistry, Life, the Universe and Everything (OCLUE) is an undergraduate lecture-based organic chemistry course that has been transformed in line with the vision for science education set out by the 'Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts and Core Ideas' (National Research Council, 2012). OCLUE is designed…

Freshmen and sophomores in college are historically at risk of disengaging with general and organic chemistry courses, performing poorly and not continuing in STEM. Utility value (UV) interventions, though, have increased the achievement and retention of low-performing students in psychology and introductory biology courses. In this study, a…

Poor results on the first exam in a course can be a shock to freshmen college students who found great success in high school. The experience can be demoralizing and put students in the mindset that academic success is out of reach. To convince such students that not only is academic success possible but readily achievable, I presented a 25-minute…

This dissertation focuses on three manuscripts all related to bolstering science achievement through recommendations from the National Research Council (NRC) regarding the teaching and learning of science. The manuscripts address meeting the NRC's call to incorporate curriculum and assessment that lead to more in-depth knowledge that can be…

Framed in an interpretative phenomenological approach, this study explored the role of teaching subject (i.e. discipline) in Iranian teachers' online identity construction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from teachers of hard and soft sciences through semi-structured interviews, reported practices and online interactions. Data…

This study examines the often-heard assumption in science teaching that some pedagogies in science classrooms can serve a dual function--improve the student-perceived teacher quality and improve students' affinity to STEM professions. We asked 7507 freshmen from 40 colleges in the United States, selected in a stratified random procedure, to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among pre-service science teachers' global scientific literacy and various variables within the scope of the structural equation model. Since the relations among the variables were investigated in the structural model established for this study, correlational research methodology was…

The purpose of this study is to investigate differences between women and men in chemistry, as reflected in their responses to a global gender gap survey. The survey was conducted in 2018; responses from 1,343 valid participants across the globe were collected and analyzed. The main results show that first, women were more likely to list their…

This study investigates the instructional practices of a chemistry professor during an immersion summer program, with a focus on employing multimodal discourse within a studio-based learning environment. For this study, multimodal discourse includes natural language, gestures, mathematical expressions, symbolic visual representations, and manual…