Assessment in many Central- and Eastern-European countries is dominated by summative assessment (SA). Simultaneously, researchers and educators from western Europe and the US proclaim the formative assessment (FA) as an important element of the educational process and advise including it into curricula and everyday teachers' practice. The research…

Curriculum materials can play a major role in shaping teachers' thinking about instruction and content as well as serve as a support for teachers' learning. With the inclusion of engineering in NGSS, many teachers may be turning to existing curriculum materials to help them infuse engineering into their science classroom, especially when they do…

This article reports on the introduction of a simple, portable, low-cost, and hands-on spectral tool for first-year chemistry students to use inside the laboratory and its spontaneous dissemination outside of the laboratory. The Mini Spec is a refinement of the Schwabacher minispectroscope in terms of simplicity and language load on the students.…

A discovery-based undergraduate organic chemistry lab experiment has been developed in which students establish the diastereoselectivity of hydride reduction of the a-chiral ketone (±)-benzoin isopropyl ether to erythro and threo diastereomeric alcohols by two different reducing agents. Students achieve this goal by working collaboratively and…

Educators around the world have been challenged to adapt their teaching and pastoral care rapidly in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In this article, we, the academic members of the Chemistry Education and Communication Research Theme (CECR) from the School of Chemistry at the University of Sydney, reflect on the challenges and successes…

The global COVID-19 pandemic required science educators to rapidly redesign their courses to instruct, support, and motivate students in a new remote learning environment. This adjustment was particularly challenging for courses with a laboratory component, where beakers and pipettes were exchanged for computer screens and keyboards. We present…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted teaching and learning worldwide during the Spring 2020 semester. Students and teachers had to shift to online teaching and learning in short order. With little time to prepare and inadequate training, faculty and students were thrust into a fluid situation, receiving training while teaching and learning. This essay…

In this communication the development of an online course on the topic "organic chemistry" for nonmajor chemistry students is described and discussed. For this online course, the existing classroom course was further developed. New elements such as podcasts, task navigators, and a forum for discussing the solving of tasks or problems…

Owing to the COVID-19 global pandemic, three chemistry instructors at Ferris State University, with no previous online instructional experience, made the abrupt midsemester switch from face-to-face to remote delivery in their respective chemistry courses. This paper discusses the importance of communication during the rapid change to remote…

General chemistry, CHE 101, at Hampton University is an undergraduate course designed to meet curriculum requirements for nonscience majors. The four-credit course consists of a lecture and a laboratory, taken concurrently. The lecture consists of three 50 minute or two 75 minute sessions, and the laboratory consists of one 3 hour session every…

Reaction mechanisms commonly used in organic chemistry are a great challenge for students in terms of understanding the representation and inferring the appropriate chemical concepts. In order to support the process of identifying and selecting chemical concepts, purposefully designed case comparisons are widely used. While these tasks place great…

A common misconception about dissolving is that heating and/or stirring are required for the dissolving process to occur. In this study, quantitative experimental evidence was collected and analyzed to demonstrate that neither heating nor stirring is required for dissolving. Educators can use the data and results in this study to address this…

We report a series of experiments based upon cinnamon oil that were developed to provide a practical integration of green and sustainable chemistry concepts for the organic chemistry laboratory. Five experiments centering around cinnamaldehyde as a green, plant-based chemical were performed by undergraduate students in a second-year organic…

The ability to visualize chemical processes can be an asset in a teaching laboratory. Despite the advances in laboratory technology, apparatuses used in the teaching of simple thermodynamics concepts, such as exothermic/endothermic reactions, historically remain unchanged and can benefit from a fresh perspective. The recent incorporation of…

This paper revisits the tie-dyeing process through a bioinspired and safer alternative to nucleophilic aromatic substitution (S[subscript N]Ar) reactions for an introductory organic chemistry laboratory. The simple and straightforward experiment provides students with an opportunity to gain practical experience in conducting a chemical reaction in…