Organic Fanatic is a free-of-charge quiz-based mobile application game that encourages students to test their abilities and enhance their learning of organic structure and reactivity through a fun, arcade-style interface. Students can attempt a total of 270 multiple choice questions, choosing from a possible 1080 associated answers that can be…

Secondary science education plays a key role in students' process to become scientifically literate citizens. However, teaching students to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to deal with complex societal issues is challenging. This paper reports about a study in which Scrum -- a methodology to manage complex projects -- was implemented in…

New notions of science teaching and learning provide challenges for designing and using classroom assessment. Existing assessments are not effective in assessing and supporting desired science learning because they are not designed to capture and aid such learning (NRC 2014; Pellegrino 2013). In addition, it is important to evaluate effectiveness…

MATLAB live scripts are useful for reproducible programmatic compilation of chemical data and literature. In this article, we use a combination of the PubChem PUG REST Application Programming Interface (API), Structured Data Query (SDQ) agent, and text extraction with MATLAB live scripts that allow programmatic PubChem similarity searching, SMARTS…

Thermodynamics and kinetics are key topics in the chemistry curriculum that pose challenges to students across a range of educational levels. These struggles arise from the complexity and mixed representations inherent to the topics. Additionally, while thermodynamics and kinetics are related, students struggle to make conceptually correct…

This study explores prospective primary school teachers' misconceptions concerning basic concepts in chemistry. The data was gathered during the years 2012-2016 among first-year primary school teachers in Finland (N = 389). The results show that every year, as many as 40%-80% of teachers share the same kinds of misconceptions as children ages 5-12…

Even though small talk has been investigated in a variety of business contexts and service encounters, it is understudied in instructional settings. This paper explores the occurrence of small talk in a university chemistry lab between a Chinese international teaching assistant (ITA) and American students. Drawing on naturally occurring…

While the paths after graduate school are increasingly varied, the central goal of doctoral programs remains to develop independent researchers. Given the important role of doctoral advisors in the socialization and progress-making of doctoral students, we conducted semi-structured interviews with faculty advisors who regularly advise chemistry…

There has been widespread interest in the study of oxoacids of phosphorus owing to their characteristic structures and uses in various areas of daily life. In this article, a new strategy is recommended to determine their structures. This strategy will help to develop problem-solving skills and creativity among students. The strategy is based on…

In 2012, the National Research Council and the American Chemical Society criticized many graduate education programs in the chemical sciences for not adequately preparing graduate students for the interdisciplinary careers that they will likely occupy. These and other reports anecdotally suggest that soft skills, broad versus specific knowledge,…

A bridge course intended to ease the transition from Organic Chemistry I to II was designed for a January term that spans 2 weeks and features sharply focused topics courses. In the first week, key topics from Organic Chemistry I are revisited to ensure that students have a firm foundation on which to build. During the second week, a selection of…

Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) is one of the most commonly used analytical techniques for the measurement of metals in environmental matrices. However, one of the drawbacks of ICP-OES is interference, viz., spectral and nonspectral (due to transport effects) interference. In this simple laboratory experiment,…

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a need for social distancing measures in public spaces and will have an important impact on university level teaching going forward. Remote methods to complete laboratory related activities are a potential means of students achieving practical credit while still isolating or social distancing. We outline the…

To reduce the spread of COVID-19, most universities and colleges have moved all instruction temporarily online, including the instruction of chemistry laboratory courses. Teaching laboratory courses online while keeping students engaged is challenging and often leads to presenting prerecorded lab demonstrations, lab animations, or virtual…

Since the sudden emergence of COVID-19 global pandemic, all educational institutions have looked to move resources and delivery online. Some institutions had already embraced delivering instruction in this way; however, broader adaptation to this teaching style is new to many educators. While the teaching of theoretical concepts is more easily…