Students use causal reasoning in their everyday lives to generate hypotheses as to why an event occurred, or to create predictions about future events. Also, causal reasoning skills are critical in the laboratory setting and are needed to (1) look for patterns in collected data, (2) determine if relationships exist between variables, and (3)…

Students difficulty in relating chemistry concepts to everyday life leads to their inability to explore and developed skills needed, especially critical thinking. Therefore, this study aimed to develop students' critical thinking skills by integrating socio-critical and problem-oriented approaches to chemistry learning with environmental issues in…

The Model of the Use of Evolutionary Trees (MUET)-curricular module that systematically and comprehensively introduces the learning of evolutionary trees for the lower-level college students was developed and implemented in an introductory organismal biology laboratory course at a mid-size, doctoral degree-granting institution. A…

The study focused on the effect of teams-games-tournament (TGT) on mathematics performance, behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, and motivation to learn mathematics of Grade 8 students. Experimental and descriptive methods of research were utilized. Findings revealed that there was no significant difference in the pre-test results of the…

Student writing center use has been associated with positive academic outcomes, yet less attention has been paid to what, exactly, influences their participation. The researcher surveyed 434 community college students on a range of demographic and academic variables, as well as their level of self-efficacy in writing, to predict their writing…

Enhancing student employability is a key aspect of any chemistry-based degree; however, embedding such activities in the curriculum is often challenging. Placements (internships in the USA) or experiential visits are the most widely used approach, but these are not always inclusive. Work-integrated learning (WIL), the practice of combining…

Our main goal was to investigate if and how using multiple immersive virtual reality (iVR) simulations and their video playback, in a science course, affects student learning over time. We conducted a longitudinal study, in ecological settings, at an undergraduate field-course on three topics in environmental biology. Twenty-eight undergraduates…

In the midst of a global pandemic in spring 2020, physical chemistry faculty gathered to share strategies and resources for teaching remotely. During this conversation, instructors created a shared document compiling the challenges they faced in spring 2020 and ways to improve teaching and learning in the physical chemistry classroom and…

Introductory physics for life sciences (IPLS) courses have emerged as a type of physics course within the introductory courses sequence. The interdisciplinary aspects of these courses as well as the diverse student populations that they serve create significant challenges for instructors who choose to design and deliver them. The Living Physics…

Inquiry-based laboratory activities, as a part of science curricula, have been advocated to increase students' learning outcomes and improve students' learning experiences, but students sometimes struggle with open-inquiry activities. This study aims to investigate students' perceptions of inquiry-based learning in a set of laboratory activities,…

Building on literature addressing doctoral student socialization and scientific research groups, we qualitatively explore the gendered nature of laboratory rotations for 54 women pursuing STEM doctorates. Using in-depth interviews and a feminist phenomenological approach, findings highlight how women (re)constructed strategies to select lab…

Benzoyl peroxide is used as a bleaching agent for flour and whey processing, a polymerization initiator in the synthesis of plastics, and the active component of acne medication. Because of its simplicity and wide application, benzoyl peroxide is a target molecule of interest. It can be affordably synthesized in three steps from bromobenzene using…

Raman spectroscopy is a powerful experimental technique, yet it is often missing from the undergraduate physical chemistry laboratory curriculum. Tetrachloromethane (CCl[subscript 4]) is the ideal molecule for an introductory vibrational spectroscopy experiment and the symmetric stretch vibration contains fine structure due to isotopic variations…

Size exclusion chromatography is an important technique in the separation of biological and polymeric samples by molecular weight. While a number of laboratory experiments have been published that use this technique for the purification of large molecules, this is the first report of an experiment that focuses on purifying an unknown small…

We present a general physics laboratory exercise that centres around the use of the electrocardiogram sensor as an application of circuits and electronic signal filtering. Although these topics are commonly taught in the general physics classroom, many students consider topics such as alternating current as unrelated to their future professions.…