Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, education at all levels has temporarily shifted to remote learning, hobbling an integral component of chemistry courses: the laboratory. The chemistry lab is crucial for developing student engagement and learning with hands-on, relevant experiments in a socially dynamic classroom setting. The transition to remote…

A semester-long research project for second-semester organic chemistry lab sections was developed. Student projects were based on preliminary data from faculty research that suggested the natural product neurolenin B to be a treatment for lymphatic filariasis. Students isolated neurolenins from the Central American plant "Neurolaena…

Techniques are needed to train students in "writing to learn", whose main goal is to "learn to write". This work aims to exemplify how writing can be a teaching learning technique in an example in Chemistry to develop a correct understanding of the preparation of molar solutions in the laboratory. It is essential that this is…

The state of alarm due to COVID-19 pandemic in Spain stopped all educational and most university research activities. The Spanish Anatomical Society (SAE) Consensus Expert Group on Body Donations piloted a study based on a questionnaire to know the status of body donations and dissection activities during the lockdown, as well as the future…

In September 2020, Irish schools reopened following their emergency closure due to the COVID-19 crisis. Measures were put in place to minimise the risk of transmission of the virus within schools and communities. However, these measures were likely to impact on teachers' capacity to facilitate learning in science, particularly the practical and…

The 'Moss Safari' activity was developed to assist with knowing which organisms to look for when observing a drop of water squeezed from moss for the first time. In this case study, the activity was introduced online to 34 trainee science teachers. This was followed by a post-session questionnaire evaluating their experience of the Moss Safari.…

Working with undergraduates in an organic synthesis research laboratory presents a unique set of challenges. An undergraduate research program must be designed to focus on teaching students to "think like a chemist" while advancing the principal investigator's scientific agenda. However, as novices in the laboratory, undergraduate…

Practical learning methodologies have become the need of the hour in the education sector, in particular in engineering education, to achieve technical competencies and skills. Advancements in web-based learning strategies have evolved over the years, and technology has played a major role in creating e-learning resources, among which remote labs…

The theory of Expansive learning and the change laboratory (CL) methodology has been developed and applied in many studies on workplace learning and educational change. There are fewer studies made on small-scale interventions, exploring the longitudinal development of expansive learning in an educational change effort. This article examines a CL…

Teaching chemistry without access to a traditional laboratory space is an ongoing challenge that has become especially relevant because of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. While several remote learning options exist for covering general chemistry concepts (including kitchen-based experiments, online modules, and virtual reality), few options provide…

A laboratory experiment was performed using tetra-n-butylammonium bromide (TBAB) ionic semiclathrate hydrate, a crystalline compound. Ionic semiclathrate hydrates have unique properties, and hence, novel technologies utilizing the ionic semiclathrate hydrates have been proposed to date. Thus, students could learn fundamentals of functional…

We are living in the Big Data era, and yet we may have serious troubles when dealing with a handful of kinetic data if we are not properly instructed. The aim of this paper, related to enzyme kinetics, is to illustrate how to determine the K[subscript m] and V[subscript max] of a michaelian enzyme avoiding the pitfalls in which we often fall. To…

A laboratory experiment was developed to introduce undergraduate chemistry students to the chemical characterization of agroindustrial waste extracts by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC--MS). The students prepared hexane and dichloromethane extracts from black pepper ("Piper nigrum" L.) waste. GC--MS analysis revealed the…

Virtual labs have proven to be very versatile and valuable for providing realistic experience for students in STE (Science, Technology, and Engineering) fields. As we progress from delivery of instructional material from classroom to the Internet, there is need to develop laboratory exercises to supplement the theoretical lessons. A Web-based…

Academic work in universities is in flux with staff increasingly being confronted with multiple and conflicting roles, often leading to academics experiencing feelings of fragmentation and despair. Though much has been written about the changing nature of academic work and its effects on the academic workforce, there has been less exploration of…