Online conferences are a means of replacing the absence of physical meetings canceled due to COVID-19. In this communication we outline ten tips for those looking to host online meetings, based on our recent experience of running the conference "Methods in Chemistry Education Research (MICER)" online to 320 participants over 3 days in…

Rising cases of COVID-19 caused St. John's University to transition to an online educational model in the spring 2020 semester. As a result, an in-person Cooperative Learning advanced general chemistry laboratory course was transitioned into an online/remote Cooperative Learning experience. Cooperative Learning in the general chemistry laboratory…

We report a research-enhanced undergraduate laboratory practical in which students synthesize and characterize color-controllable, stable silver nanoparticles for use in a simple catalytic reaction analyzed by UV-vis spectroscopy. The practical has been prepared for students using electronic laboratory notebooks, enables collaborative data…

A new two-step experiment has been designed and developed for the curriculum of the Organic Chemistry Laboratory 2 (CHEM2240L) sophomore course at Xavier University of Louisiana, in New Orleans. Initially, cyclohexanol was converted to cyclohexanone using bleach as the oxidizing agent followed by the formation of the cyclohexanone oxime. However,…

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is an indispensable technique in the organic chemistry laboratory for elucidation of molecular structure. Miniaturization of NMR technology has attracted attention and acceptance due to a considerable reduction in the cost to acquire and maintain the instrument. The advent of low-field, low-cost, and…

Genome editing has widespread influence in many fields, including medicine, biotechnology, and agriculture. Despite their origins in chemistry laboratories, these techniques are currently under utilized in chemistry curricula. Introducing future generations of chemists to these emerging technologies is essential in chemistry classrooms. The…

Publicly available, learner-generated questions were used to develop a methodology for advancing the exploratory stages of science education research. Data from four complementary online sources were collected, analyzed, and compared to the extant research literature on the science education topic of isotopes, a challenging concept for many…

Group work can engage students in active learning, yet students often resist working with peers in class. We investigated the impact of five minimally structured, easily implemented group work strategies used during weekly problem-based discussion sections in two introductory chemistry courses through student surveys and quiz score analyses.…

The material of a standard second-year undergraduate organic chemistry class has been reorganized and reframed to emphasize the mechanistic connections between reactions and to clarify the language with which organic reaction mechanisms are discussed. Assessment of the results of this reorganization shows that student test scores do not decline in…

Most forensic chemistry experiments focus on the usual suspects involving criminal scenarios: illicit drug identification, gunshot residue detection, blood and fingerprint analysis, and arson investigations. However, environmental forensics involves chemical techniques that can expand the breadth of experience for forensic chemistry students. An…

For undergraduate students to be prepared for graduate school and industry, it is imperative that they understand how to merge the theoretical insights gleaned through their undergraduate education with the raw data sets acquired through materials analysis. Thus, the ability to implement data analysis is a vital skill that students should develop.…

To prove that oxygen is irreversibly consumed in the blue bottle reaction, a manometer or a plastic bottle was used to show a permanent reduction in the gas pressure in a reaction vessel. This demonstration may be misleading because the change in gas pressure can be attributed to a number of other factors such as temperature change and involvement…

We present an algorithm for solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation that is based on the finite-difference expression of the kinetic energy operator. Students who have some knowledge of linear algebra can understand the theory used to derive the algorithm. This is because the finite-difference kinetic energy matrix and the Hückel matrix…

Three-dimensional learning is the name given to the vision for science education described in the National Academies consensus report "A Framework for K-12 Science Education." Of the three dimensions described in the Framework, the Disciplinary Core Ideas and the Science and Engineering Practices have been enthusiastically adopted by…

The aim of this qualitative case study was to explore secondary students' ability to transfer among representation levels in relation to stoichiometry. In the study, 40 students in the 11th grade from two classes of an Anatolian high school in the east part of Turkey were selected as sample group. The data were collected by using a questionnaire…