Enhancing Undergraduate Chemistry Education with the Online Dynamic ChemWiki Resource

2011 ◽  
Vol 88 (6) ◽  
pp. 840-840 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald J. Rusay ◽  
Michelle R. Mccombs ◽  
Matthew J. Barkovich ◽  
Delmar S. Larsen
Keyword(s):  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Undergraduate Chemistry

Development and validation of an instrument to measure undergraduate chemistry students’ critical thinking skills

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-78
Author(s):  
Stephen M. Danczak ◽  
Christopher D. Thompson ◽  
Tina L. Overton
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Convergent Validity ◽  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Internal Reliability ◽  
Validity Testing ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Undergraduate Chemistry

The importance of developing and assessing student critical thinking at university can be seen through its inclusion as a graduate attribute for universities and from research highlighting the value employers, educators and students place on demonstrating critical thinking skills. Critical thinking skills are seldom explicitly assessed at universities. Commercial critical thinking assessments, which are often generic in context, are available. However, literature suggests that assessments that use a context relevant to the students more accurately reflect their critical thinking skills. This paper describes the development and evaluation of a chemistry critical thinking test (the Danczak–Overton–Thompson Chemistry Critical Thinking Test or DOT test), set in a chemistry context, and designed to be administered to undergraduate chemistry students at any level of study. Development and evaluation occurred over three versions of the DOT test through a variety of quantitative and qualitative reliability and validity testing phases. The studies suggest that the final version of the DOT test has good internal reliability, strong test–retest reliability, moderate convergent validity relative to a commercially available test and is independent of previous academic achievement and university of study. Criterion validity testing revealed that third year students performed statistically significantly better on the DOT test relative to first year students, and postgraduates and academics performed statistically significantly better than third year students. The statistical and qualitative analysis indicates that the DOT test is a suitable instrument for the chemistry education community to use to measure the development of undergraduate chemistry students’ critical thinking skills.

scholarly journals Supporting Flipped and Gamified Learning With Augmented Reality in Higher Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angel Lu ◽  
Crusher S. K. Wong ◽  
Richard Y. H. Cheung ◽  
Tarloff S. W. Im
Keyword(s):  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Learning Theories ◽  
Smart Devices ◽  
Pilot Survey ◽  
Undergraduate Chemistry ◽  
Development Experience ◽  
Gamified Learning

Chemistry education is challenging when many students cannot see the relevance and interest between what they learn at school and their everyday life outside the curriculum. Due to the prevalence of chemicals in real life, students lose interest in those not-so-novel Chemistry problems as they are satisfied with their rudimentary grasp of knowledge. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to draw students’ attention to those day-to-day Chemistry concepts, a task in which augmented reality (AR) can be a competent pedagogical facilitator. Despite its popularity due to the development of smart devices, educators are still averse to adopting AR in teaching because of the doubts about its pedagogical effectiveness and difficulties in implementation. This paper will demonstrate an AR app developed by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) for a year four undergraduate Chemistry course under two UGC’s project funds and CityU’s Teaching Development Grant that aligns with the university’s Discovery and Innovation-enriched Curriculum. The learning theories and technology stack of development and deployment will be shared in this paper. The consideration during preparation, production, and publishing will also be documented. A pilot survey about students’ perception of the AR showed positive feedback for the AR app in terms of enhancing awareness, learning, understanding, and engagement, which addresses the concerns of retaining students’ engagement during teaching and learning real-life Chemistry. We hope that educators who are interested in adopting AR can gain insights from this AR development experience. This research can act as a foundation for further exploration of applying AR in secondary and tertiary Chemistry education.

scholarly journals PHOTOPOLYMER AND LATEX LIFT DEMONSTRATIONS: STRATEGY TO PROBLEMATIZE SPAGHETTI-LIKE REPRESENTATION IN POLYMER CHEMISTRY

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-31
Author(s):  
Alceu Junior Paz da Silva ◽  
Leopoldo José Alexandre ◽  
Agnaldo Arroio
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Polymer Chemistry ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Undergraduate Chemistry ◽  
Visual Models ◽  
Short Course ◽  
Knowledge Area ◽  
Essential Knowledge

Despite several technological processes and products found in everyday life involve polymers, it has been neglected in Chemistry Education. In this paper, the using of spaghetti-like representations in polymer teaching was explored. For this, a short course for undergraduate chemistry students was developed and constituted by two didactic sequences. In each of them one demonstrative experiment (latex lift and photopolymerization) was used to promote practices of externalization of visual models. The analysis of the students' drawings and written texts showed demonstrations of problematized concepts relevant to polymer teaching, whereas the effectiveness of spaghetti-like representations' employment requires further research. The initiative was well-founded and satisfactory within an initial exploratory perspective and implementation of this strategy in regular disciplines can promote the increase of students' interest in polymer chemistry, an essential knowledge area for developing countries that need to build their own technologies and innovation. Keywords: visualization in chemistry, spaghetti representation, teaching of polymer.

scholarly journals Phosphorus – a “political” element for transdisciplinary chemistry education

2019 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Zowada ◽  
Ozcan Gulacar ◽  
Antje Siol ◽  
Ingo Eilks
Keyword(s):  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Research University ◽  
Digital Learning ◽  
Curriculum Innovation ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Digital Learning Environment ◽  
Undergraduate Chemistry ◽  
Innovation Project ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Development Goals

AbstractThe paper describes a curriculum innovation project for integrating the sustainability-oriented socio-scientific issue of phosphate recovery into undergraduate chemistry education. Justification for the topic is derived from the importance of responsible use of phosphates as fertilizers for achieving some of the sustainable development goals issued by the United Nations in 2015, but also by the consideration of the phosphorus biochemical flow into the environment in the concept of the world’s planetary boundaries. Integration of the topic into undergraduate general chemistry was operated by a digital learning environment providing the base for a transdisciplinary approach towards the topic. Findings are reported from an implementation case in a research university in the USA.

scholarly journals Building capabilities in chemistry education: happiness and discomfort through philosophical dialogue in chemistry

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 438-451
Author(s):  
Lynda Dunlop ◽  
Annie Hodgson ◽  
Joshua Edward Stubbs
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Student Satisfaction ◽  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Student Survey ◽  
Teaching Excellence ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Undergraduate Chemistry ◽  
Philosophical Dialogue ◽  
The Uk

Much attention is given to student satisfaction in higher education, driven in the UK by accountability mechanisms such as the National Student Survey (NSS) and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). However satisfaction is both limited and limiting, depending on students’ expectations and often associated with the avoidance of difficulty and discomfort. A more appropriate outcome for higher education is well-being and ability to flourish. This paper identifies a gap in undergraduate chemistry education. Talking Chemistry created an extracurricular space for undergraduate chemistry students to build capabilities to flourish through philosophical dialogue about chemistry. It involved 25 undergraduates over one academic year (2018–2019). Drawing on ethnographic observations, questionnaires and in-depth semi-structured individual interviews, we argue that philosophical dialogue in undergraduate chemistry studies opens up opportunities for discomfort that can contribute to students’ capabilities to achieve happiness and well-being by challenging students to think about their subject in new ways. Philosophical dialogue is a missing component of chemistry education, and we present a model for introducing it into higher education.

Undergraduate chemistry instructors’ perspectives on their students’ metacognitive development

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amber Heidbrink ◽  
Melissa Weinrich
Keyword(s):  
Pedagogical Content Knowledge ◽  
Content Knowledge ◽  
Chemistry Education ◽  
Metacognitive Skills ◽  
College Level ◽  
Pedagogical Content ◽  
Chemistry Students ◽  
Metacognitive Development ◽  
Undergraduate Chemistry ◽  
Qualitative Interview Study

Metacognition is an important skill for undergraduate chemistry students, but there has been scant research investigating chemistry instructors’ perspectives of metacognition and the development of their students’ metacognition. Since undergraduate instructors have a wide influence over what happens in their courses, it is crucial to investigate their understanding of metacognition, and discern whether they value metacognitive development for their students. This qualitative interview study explored the perspectives of seventeen chemistry instructors who taught chemistry at the college level from six different institutions across Colorado. The interviews were coded deductively according to Zohar and Dori's definitions of metacognitive knowledge and metacognitive skills, and inductively for themes through reflexive thematic analysis. These interviews provided a window into these instructors’ personal pedagogical content knowledge (pPCK) and how it influenced their enacted pedagogical content knowledge (ePCK) in relation to their students’ metacognition development. The results include a discussion of how these chemistry instructors valued their students’ metacognition, how they currently develop their students’ metacognition, and their suggestions for improving the development of metacognition in undergraduate chemistry education. Based on the results of this analysis, activities that indirectly target students’ metacognition may be more easily adopted by instructors, and more explicit awareness may be beneficial.

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