Picture boards as a visual support aid for in-lab demonstrator briefings were deployed for a single experiment in both the first and second year undergraduate practical classes. The boards are easy to create and provide an alternative, more accessible and 'presentation friendly' perspective of the laboratory manual associated with an experiment.…

We devised an activity to explore friction by testing some of the common theories on how ancient Egyptians moved the stones used to build the pyramids. The activity is suitable for a high school physics course or introductory college courses for both science majors and non-science majors. The students investigate dragging a 1-kg mass (representing…

Laboratory kits allow students to take home laboratory equipment to complete experiments on their own time. Because of the lower cost, laboratory kits expand access to hands-on experiences for online courses and to budget-strapped campuses. Although students like laboratory kits, no previous studies compared student learning objectives on…

Flavonoids have been studied extensively for their antioxidant properties. Specifically, the flavonoids in tea, such as catechin and epigallocatechin gallate, have been shown to have positive health effects. These compounds are also oxidizable, so the concentrations of these compounds in a given kind of tea can be determined using cyclic…

This innovative comprehensive experiment is a compulsory course for third-year undergraduate students in the eight-year training program leading to a Doctor of Medicine degree or Doctor of Philosophy degree at Peking University Health Science Center (PKUHSC). There is a critical educational need to prepare these students for the increasing…

Frogs are routinely used in physiology teaching laboratories to demonstrate important physiological processes. There have been recent directives that promote the use of the anesthetic MS-222 (tricaine methanesulfonate), rather than lowering body temperature with a cold water bath to prepare reptiles and amphibians for physiological experiments or…

Metabolomics is the data-driven science of small molecules. Untargeted metabolomics, using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS), differs greatly from targeted metabolite assays, using nominal mass LC-MS instruments, as it generates thousands of metabolite features which are not quantified and are identified "post…

The importance of understanding factors that contribute to surface wettability is highlighted in this new organic chemistry laboratory experiment, which aims to introduce the application of organic chemistry at the interface of polymer chemistry and material science. Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a hydrophobic silicon-based rubber, is polymerized…

We propose to reconsider the well-known experiment about the interference of white light from a thin soap film by adopting as an illuminating source the RGB triad produced by a LED projector. The interference pattern shows up in a particularly fascinating way and it contains direct, essential information about both the wave nature of light and of…

The year 2020 will forever be remembered as a season of pandemic teaching due to rising COVID-19 infections. Institutions of higher learning abruptly changed from in-person to online in attempts to minimize COVID-19 spread. Due to this, we created and taught online cell biology labs in response to the COVID-19 campus shutdown. Our virtual cell…

This paper presents a personal account of the use of Google Classroom as a Learning Management System in the Chemistry theory and laboratory courses with the undergraduate students. Some useful features of the application are presented, with the focus on its affordances to create engaging learning environments. In its professed role in augmenting…

Recent global events and educational trends have led schools to heavily rely on digital media to educate their students. Science classes, in particular, stand to lose substantial learning opportunities without the ability to provide physical laboratory experiences. Virtual reality (VR) technology has the potential to resolve this issue, but little…

The development of a remote, synchronous general chemistry lab course, which was offered to 800 students in the fall semester of 2020, is described. The course was designed with similar curricular goals as our in-person lab course and featured chemistry kits developed by a team of faculty, staff, and graduate TAs. The kits, which were distributed…

This paper reports an innovative, hybrid teaching model for a junior level lab course. This model leverages in-person lab operation by adding a student-led online learning mode. Both course outcomes and student outcomes were evaluated. Student feedback was collected, and its analysis showed both positive and negative impacts in this hybrid model.…

A problem-based learning (PBL) methodology was implemented to a project, whose main objectives were to discuss and apply the Twelve Principles of Green Chemistry to the study of poly(vinyl alcohol)'s cross-linking reaction with dicarboxylic acids. The five participating students were oriented to be responsible for their own learning and the…