Recent educational research emphasizes the importance of personal social cognitive beliefs and metacognitive knowledge and skills for achievement in science as well as retention in the field. In this project, a mandatory evening tutorial program was developed to provide direct instruction in metacognitive skills for first year students enrolled in…

Chemistry laboratories ordinarily involve a number of visual observations and require qualitative and quantitative explanations of these observations. A student with blindness at Truman State University successfully completed the laboratory portion of the non-majors liberal arts chemistry course with the assistance of a senior undergraduate…

There have been significant increases in the number of students studying physiology in the Bachelor of Science degree-program at our university. We thought that physiology prerequisites for graduate programs in medicine and allied-health areas were facilitating these increased numbers. Undergraduate physiology students were surveyed about their…

Health sciences students need strong communication skills so that they can engage patients, explain concepts and justify medical procedures. For 3% of their final mark, 547 students studying the anatomy and physiology of the immune system were assigned the creation of a one-page brochure to help parents understand the importance and mechanism of…

A versatile experiment is described for the high school and college laboratory setting based on the synthesis of biobased polymers prepared from inexpensive, renewable, and nonhazardous chemicals. Combinations of readily available citric acid, glycerol, and tapioca root starch are used to prepare three polymeric materials with different observable…

A multiweek laboratory experiment is described, which guides students to use data to make decisions through multiple steps, before reaching a final conclusion. The lab focuses on the comparisons of fluorescence and absorbance spectroscopies to determine the concentration of a desired substance in an unknown sample in consideration of a complex…

Over the past several decades, green chemistry has gained prominence in chemistry education. However, the development of green chemistry curricula has not reached all levels of education equally, focusing mainly on elective and upper division courses. We deliberately focused our green chemistry curriculum redesign on a high enrollment introductory…

Undergraduate quantum mechanics (QM) uses a variety of notations, each with their own advantages and constraints, for representing quantum states and carrying out individual calculations. An example of this can be seen when calculating expectation values, which can be solved using several different methods. Analysis of written exam data given at…

Concepts related to the nature of science (NOS) have been considered an important part of scientific literacy as reflected in its inclusion in curriculum documents. A significant amount of science education research has focused on improving learners' understanding of NOS. One approach that has often been advocated is an "explicit and…

The use of the valence-shell electron-pair repulsion (VSEPR) model is essential for understanding aspects of bonding, molecular dipoles, inorganic complex ions, isomerization and stereochemistry, the lock-and-key mechanism for enzyme activity, and many other ideas. This paper describes how different approaches can be used to help students learn…

Regioselectivity in hetero Diels-Alder reactions can be observed in a simple reaction between a nonsymmetrical heterodiene and an unsymmetrical heterodienophile. A 9 h and easy to implement laboratory experiment is described, in which students can observe the regioselectivity of inverse "electron-demand" hetero Diels-Alder reactions of…

We investigate the effectiveness of an active learning curriculum designed for an upper division Biochemistry series at a large, public research university. The goal was to determine how effective this format was when compared to a parallel conventional course, and to see if the active learning series can be run with limited resources (one…

A creative apparatus for use in a hands-on laboratory experiment that allows the visualization of the vapor pressure as a function of temperature is described in this paper. Inspired by homemade barometers and using simple materials that are easily accessible for teaching laboratories, a lowcost system for the establishment of the vapor-pressure…

Typical laboratory exercises for undergraduate organic chemistry students involve bulk phase reactions with work up of product. In this study, students performed accelerated versions of the Katritzky reaction of para-substituted anilines with pyrylium salts in three ways: (i) by dropcasting reagents onto a paper surface and allowing solvent to…

The ACS Guidelines for bachelor's degrees in chemistry call for the curriculum to include polymer chemistry principles and the synthesis of different classes of macromolecules. Organic chemistry can provide an important introduction to polymer chemistry principles, and photochemically induced radical polymerization is one method for generating…