Background: To make students more interested and engaged in science, new teaching approaches have been developed aiming at higher order thinking. Context-based learning approaches emanate from an idea that science content knowledge should be presented in a relevant context for students to improve their learning outcomes as well as making them more…

Professional development courses help teachers integrate new content knowledge into the high-school curriculum. Designing practical online courses for this purpose is challenging, particularly in emerging fields such as nanotechnology. In this study, we evaluated such a course in three complementary dimensions: (1) knowledge, (2) the complexity of…

This article explores results from a 3-year model of laboratory instruction, Project Synapse, that synthesized biology, chemistry, and communication curricula for firstyear science majors at a STEMfocused university. Laboratory biology-chemistry integration was featured at natural intersections where disciplines used similar tools, such as…

It is essential for introductory level chemistry students to understand atomic models and how atoms interact to form chemical bonds. The tactile model in this article utilizes marbles to represent subatomic particles, a cup to represent the nucleus and wooden rings to simulate the electron orbitals. These inexpensive items can be combined to…

Learners who pass the South African National Senior Certificate (NSC) physical sciences examination generally show a weak conceptual understanding of chemistry at university. This inconsistency was investigated by examining strategies used in the teaching of chemical equilibrium in schools. A combination of on-site observations, journaling and…

With the rapid application of blended learning around the world, a large amount of literature has been accumulated. The analysis of the main research topics and development trends based on a large amount of literature is of great significance. To address this issue, this paper collected abstracts from 3772 eligible papers published between 2003…

Background: The goal of this research was to determine students' perceived self-efficacy in science classes through involving students in expanding disciplinary core idea (DCI) and interdisciplinary core idea (ICI) maps, as a method to visualize knowledge (utilizing mind mapping and concept mapping) to support students to integrate…

Redox titration problems are considered difficult for students to learn due to their abstract nature, the myriad amount of representations, and the mathematical competency required to learn and solve. The goal of this research project is to examine challenges students face in learning about redox titration-related problems, approaches they use in…

Organic qualitative analysis is one of the challenging chemical concepts in students learning of chemistry. The West African Examinations Council chemistry chief examiners for years, have lamented on students' poor performance in organic qualitative analysis at the senior high school level. This study, therefore, investigated chemistry students'…

Culturally Relevant Education (CRE) focuses on the design of curricular materials that strengthen students' cultural identities while teaching classroom content and science practices. While examples of CRE in science continue to grow, the identities and cultures of the designers are often different from those of the students and communities in…

Primarily undergraduate institutions have limited resources to offer required, credit based supplemental instruction for students. Meredith College's Chemistry, Physics, and Geoscience Department revised the laboratory chemistry curriculum to incorporate chemistry concept recitations into the lab course schedule. Activities for the following…

Recently there is an increasing need for experiments that can be conducted remotely. In this sense, this paper presents three experiments about materials science and an X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique that can be taught and performed entirely remotely. The first experiment is about the calculation of lattice parameters, atomic radii, and…

With the rise in implementation of peer-led learning in higher education, the interactions between peer instructors and their students warrant further investigation as an increasingly critical component of student learning. In this work, Teaching Interns (TIs) are undergraduate peer instructors that lead supplemental learning sessions in General…

We report a new online suite of tools that enables inquiry-based active-learning activities to develop students' representational competence about atomic orbitals. Orbital Explorer is a Web site for the visualization and interactive investigation of atomic orbital properties. Orbital Explorer contains two integrated tools, namely, Atomic Orbital…

A smartphone-based digital imaging method has been successfully introduced in an undergraduate laboratory class to quantify fluoride ions in water. Students first synthesized the chemosensor (E)-2-(1-(6-nitro-2-oxo-2H-chromen-3-yl)ethylidene)-N-phenylhydrazine-1-carbothioamide (CT) via an eco-friendly and green microwave-assisted protocol and…