As the need for online or virtual science courses grows, it is important to incorporate laboratory work into these courses. However, it is difficult to find cost-effective ways to integrate the laboratory work, especially as campuses across the world have had to quickly transition to the online learning environment in the midst of the COVID-19…

During the final week of winter quarter, the University of California, Irvine announced all exams would be online and the following quarter would be delivered remotely. This necessitated a course-wide common final with over 2000 students scheduled to be moved online. For the following quarter, the move to remote instruction included three…

In response to China's Ministry of Education's directive for "postponement of school without suspension of learning" to combat the spread of COVID-19, we commenced online classes at Shandong University. Teaching in an online environment presented a number of challenges in comparison with face-to-face instruction. A key question raised…

As part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring 2020 semester, a large-lecture organic POGIL classroom was moved completely online. Normally the course involved daily group work that was facilitated by undergraduate teaching assistants, and these TAs would also assess student process skills such as critical thinking, information…

To become scientifically literate, students must learn to proficiently utilise and fluently integrate a suite of specialised and contextualised multimodal literacy practices. While the frequency of explicit reading and writing instruction in the sciences is increasing, the wider range of multimodal practices are often not adequately addressed. We…

We present an experiment designed to hone the decision-making skills of (undergraduate) chemistry students by using aqueous crossed aldol reactions. Here, we present two simple crossed aldol reactions based on inexpensive and readily available materials: The condensation of vanillin and cinnamaldehyde with acetone. The procedure uses the variation…

MEMs gyros, such as those in smartphones allow the angular velocity of pendulums to be precisely measured at large angles, and phase plots of the angular acceleration versus the angular displacement confirm that [double dot][phi] = -[omega][superscript 2][subscript o] sin[phi] even for the non-sinusoidal motion at amplitude [phi][subscript o]…

The topic of electric and magnetic fields is fundamental to the physics curriculum in both high school and college. The applied aspect of this topic has triggered the rapid development of modern technology in this era. This paper reported a remote data acquisition system developed for experiments with magnetic fields by coils to support…

A set of web-based stereochemistry tools which help students use virtual 3D models to translate Newman projections and chair conformations and assign "R/S" labels to stereocenters from 2D dashed-wedged structures is described. These tools are unique in the way they link 2D dashed-wedged structures to 3D models to help students develop…

Whether students view intelligence as a fixed or malleable trait (i.e., their "mindset") has significant implications for their responses to failure and academic outcomes. Despite a long history of research on mindset and its growing popularity, recent meta-analyses suggest that mindset does a poor job of predicting academic outcomes for…

Women and African Americans are disproportionately underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, starting in high school and continuing through selection of college majors and eventual participation as workers (Upton & Tanenbaum, 2014). Diekman's "Goal Congruity Model," in particular, offers a brief…

Students come to science class with many ideas of how the natural world works, some of which do not match the consensus of the scientific community and can lead to misunderstandings. Because a growing body of educational research indicates that these misconceptions can serve as resources for learning, we developed a four-point plan to leverage…

This paper focuses on examining the effectiveness of three-dimensional (3D) computer models on student teachers' academic achievement, mental model construction, and spatial ability used in learning the "atomic models" topic in this study. The students were randomly assigned into two groups: the treatment group (TG) where 3D computer…

Rapid advances in the quality and accessibility of immersive virtual reality (IVR) have brought about intense interest in applications of the technology within higher education, including STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) teaching and learning. However, evidence is mixed on the effectiveness of IVR for STEM teaching and…

The COVID-19 pandemic has made conducting in-person research a health risk for interviewers and participants. Near the start of the pandemic, many universities pivoted to emergency remote teaching where courses were delivered remotely in observance of safety guidelines. The safety guidelines also necessitated that research be done remotely. We…