Success in general chemistry requires active engagement with course material. COVID-19 accelerated the move to online courses, creating a crucial need for engaging course activities. The Mysterious Compound chemistry game was designed to engage undergraduate students in introductory chemistry concepts while allowing the instructor and students to…

Radioactive isotopes are an essential part of everyday life and an expanding area of research in the fields of medicine, catalysis, and energy. Here, we describe an educational activity that introduces the concept of radioactive decay and the corresponding benefits, risks, and safe handling strategies. Specifically, we have developed an…

A survey of Oregon State University Department of Chemistry personnel revealed that few of the faculty and graduate student respondents (only 6.7% and 8.3%, respectively) reported knowing the location of the automated external defibrillator (AED) nearest their workspace. Furthermore, a minority of both faculty and graduate student respondents…

Cycloadditions in combination with multicomponent reactions are among the most valuable synthetic tools used by organic chemists to construct cyclic and heterocyclic compounds in a straightforward way. Although cycloadditions, such as the Diels--Alder reaction, are mainly covered in basic and advanced organic courses for undergraduate students,…

Laboratory automation and data science are valuable new skills for all chemists, but most pedagogical activities involving automation to date have focused on upper-level coursework. Herein, we describe a combined computational and experimental lab suitable for a first-year undergraduate general chemistry course, in which these topics are…

Density functional theory (DFT) is indubitably the most popular and among the most successful approaches for approximately solving the many-electron Schro¨dinger equation. The level of understanding on the part of both researchers and students using DFT, however, is lacking, given the availability of black-box software. The present work addresses…

Text-to-speech (TTS) technology is a common accommodation available for students with disabilities. Despite the ubiquitous nature of TTS, this technology has not been explored in laboratory settings for neurodiverse college students. This study explores the adaptability of laboratory accessible TTS technology (originally developed for blind/low…

An understanding of statistical concepts is necessary for a chemist with a complete education. Here, statistical tests were taught using the R Commander and the Factoshiny packages. These packages run on R software and have a graphical user interface (GUI), which allows students to do statistical tests quickly and easily. These packages were…

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way that students and educators are able to interact in higher education settings, and timely investigations into its impact on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students are of critical importance. In a continued effort to provide student data to chemistry educators, we offer a…

The understanding of analytical chemistry and its application in different areas of life science is something that should be encouraged for students studying chemistry, and also something that appeals to many students. Life science includes a vast variety of areas, out of which some are more easily approached in student projects. The chemical…

Chemicals are characteristic of chemistry education practices at all educational levels. The aim of this study is to explore teachers' didactic rationales when reasoning about the use of chemicals in their teaching practice. Experienced upper secondary chemistry teachers in Sweden were interviewed about their considerations regarding why, when,…

In this work we discuss the implementation of a flipped active learning classroom model in large general chemistry classes at the University of Nevada, Reno. The flipped setup is detailed with survey results on student perception toward the design of a course. Although our recommendations were originally tailored to the online environment, the…

Many of the current synthetic methodologies utilized within academic and industrial laboratories require knowledge of how to safely handle air- and moisture-sensitive reagents and work under inert atmospheres. As a result, the ACS Committee on Professional Training recommends incorporating synthetic methods that make use of these inert atmospheres…

The start of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a change in the way chemistry education was delivered across the globe. As we emerge from the pandemic we can start to assess the medium to long-term impact it has had. In this study, we evaluated the teaching methods used by the UK Higher Education chemistry community over the past two years through the…

Studies have demonstrated that visual-spatial skills correlate with student performance and success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The ability to reason with spatial information is essential for conceptual subjects like chemistry, a deep understanding of which requires dealing with the invisible world of atoms and molecules…