Though several conceptual inventories have been developed for thermal physics, none target upper-division material and all focus specifically on thermodynamics without including statistical mechanics content. In this paper, we outline the development process of an upper-division thermal physics assessment that captures both thermodynamics and…

The study of genetics centers on how encoded information in DNA underlies similarities and differences between individuals and how traits are inherited. Genetics topics covered in a wide variety of undergraduate biology classrooms can relate to various identities held by students such as gender identity, disability, and race/ethnicity, among…

Visual representations, such as pathway models, are increasingly being used to both communicate higher education science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education program evaluation plans as well as accurately represent complex programs and the systems within which the educational programs reside. However, these representations…

A growing body of educational research is demonstrating the improvements to learning gains and student performance that can be promoted by a flipped-classroom model in university chemistry courses. Usually, a core aspect of the flipped-class model is the student viewing of a preclass instructional video, allotting time for an in-class activity…

Mass spectrometers are ever-increasingly powerful, user-friendly, and affordable. Thus, the addition of mass spectrometry experiments into the undergraduate laboratory curriculum is now both feasible and an effective tool to introduce students to relevant instrumentation. Here an experiment demonstrating the use of a high-resolution electrospray…

A simple computer interface for controlling a compact spectrograph for use as a spectrophotometer in an undergraduate teaching laboratory was developed. The project was implemented on a Raspberry Pi computer which permits the integration of a light source into the software. The interface was written in Python to facilitate modification by the user…

UC Merced's upper-division analytical chemistry course has been modified to include a series of Jupyter notebooks intended to introduce chemistry students to the Python computer language. These Jupyter notebooks were designed to cover a wide variety of topics common to quantitative and instrumental analysis. Assuming no prior programming…

The outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has forced chemistry teaching from traditional classrooms to online courses worldwide. Herein, we will share some experiences of our online teaching of inorganic chemistry. First, we investigated various teaching platforms and adjusted the online teaching approaches for helping students to be…

Experiments written for students who were quarantined during the COVID-19 pandemic are described. These were developed to provide hands-on lab experiences that students would not get due to the online nature of course offerings during the crisis. The laboratories described include an extraction and oxidation of aldehydes from food items, a study…

This report describes rapid changes to instructional materials, assessment, and technology use in a flipped college-level organic chemistry course in response to the sudden COVID-19 campus closures and midsemester transition to remote learning. The instructors modified in-class instructional materials to accommodate students' preference for…

When campuses across the world needed to transition to the online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there were many challenges educators faced, and addressing academic integrity issues were some of the most important. Certain strategies, such as online proctoring or additional software, were not available to most institutions because the…

The author's organic chemistry course at Thomas Jefferson University incorporated student engagement activities through Nearpod, a web-based classroom response system. After transitioning to remote instruction due to the COVID-19 outbreak in the spring of 2020, students were given the option to complete multiple-choice poll questions either…

During the transition from an in-person Organic Chemistry II class to a remote learning version of the class midsemester, a small-group problem-solving session exercise was replaced with embedded video questions as a low-stakes assignment with direct instructor feedback. Whereas the in-person small-group problem-solving session was a group…

In a normal year approximately 3 months pass between students taking their final examinations in high school or college and beginning an undergraduate course in chemistry. In the months prior to those examinations, students will usually have undertaken an extensive period of revision and consolidation of the key concepts learned throughout their…

In this work we present the application of design based research (DBR) methodology to conduct a systematic iterative study of the design and implementation of a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) on emf (electromotive force). This work is the final part of a broader study that started with the analysis of students' difficulties with emf in the…