Using questioning strategies to involve students in actually doing and analyzing experimental design can offer useful insights to instructors and students alike. Describes an interactive exploration of Alka Seltzer. (CCM)

Describes the experiences of a medical school faculty who have been offering for more than 10 years a two-course series in the biochemistry of human disease to undergraduate students majoring in biochemistry, biology, or chemistry. Recommends the teaching of specialized, advanced courses to undergraduate, pre-professional students. (DDR)

Uses a video presentation of six situations relating to the evaporation and boiling of liquids and the escape of dissolved gases from solution and investigates graduate scientists' understanding of the concepts of boiling and evaporation. (Author/YDS)

Uses student-taught review sessions to reinforce basic concepts and to practice giving an oral presentation to an attentive audience. Indicates that the program was successful in helping students develop oral presentation skills while they were experiencing peer teaching. (ASK)

Introduces a web site designed to teach descriptive chemistry through testing. (YDS)

Describes a project for high school chemistry students that links science with art: making glazed ceramic pots. Includes materials list, base glaze recipe, step-by-step procedures for setting up a lab, and the time frame involved. Text for students covers the history of earthenware pottery, fundamentals of working with clay, description of the…

Presents a laboratory activity using an Ob-scertainer which can be completed by students working as individuals, in pairs, and in groups. Explains the pair approach and focuses on the hypothesis forming process and group roles. (YDS)

Explains how to use posters as an alternative assessment method in place of traditional written exams in an integrated chemistry, physics, and mathematics course. Investigates the effectiveness of poster exams on student learning. (YDS)

This article reports on the value of using student-generated analogies with undergraduate science students as a strategy for promoting conceptual understanding. A quantitative study was undertaken involving students in four sections of an introductory chemistry course for prospective science majors attending a four year college in British…

More than a decade ago, the United States Congress passed the Scientific and Advanced Technology Act, which authorized the Advanced Technological Education program (ATE). Through ATE, the National Science Foundation (NSF) was directed to develop models aimed at two-year colleges of advanced technological education in order to expand the nation's…

Brigham Young University's Center for Instructional Design (CID) creates online courses and multimedia instructional applications for university faculty. This paper asserts that including usability testing as a part of evaluation improves the quality and effectiveness of computer-mediated instruction. The paper describes the fundamental purpose…

The practical epistemologies of university students during laboratory work in chemistry are analyzed to enhance understanding of how teaching practices interact with learners. The purpose is to develop a theoretical framework of learning as action that can be used by educational researchers to examine meaning-making, but also by teachers in close…

This study investigated the ways in which beliefs about the nature of the science vary as a function of an individual's chemistry expertise and chemistry research experience across the range from high-schools students, whose exposure to chemistry occurs in the classroom, to practicing research chemists. Interviews conducted with a total of 91…

Chemistry is a unique language in and of itself that can be difficult for students to understand. For instance, a white powder can be translated down to the atomic level in a chemical equation, thus creating a chemical word that needs to be decoded. In this article, the author shares an approach to a basic curriculum that makes chemistry…

Physicist James Trefil once describes the universe as "The Spongy Universe," comparing large-scale cosmic structures to the structure of a sponge. The NASA Genesis education module "Cosmic Chemistry: Cosmogony" features the "Spongy Universe" activity in which pairs of students observe a household sponge, making…