Well-designed laboratories can help students master content and science practices by successfully completing the laboratory experiments. Upper-division chemistry laboratory courses often present special challenges for instruction due to the instrument intensive nature of the experiments. To address these challenges, particularly those associated with rotation style course structures, pre-laboratory videos were generated for two upper-division laboratory courses, Analytical Measurements and Physical Measurements. Sets of videos were developed for each experiment: a pre-laboratory lecture, an experimental, and a data analysis video. We describe the theoretical principles that guided the design of the instructional videos as well as the process. To assess the impact of the videos on students' successful completion of the experiments, a mixed-methods approach to data collection was used, which included video-recorded laboratory observations, student one-on-one interviews, and the Meaningful Learning in the Laboratory Inventory (MLLI) survey. Our findings indicate that video-based resources can help alleviate some challenges associated with rotation-style labs, particularly the temporal disconnect between pre-laboratory lectures and experiment completion as well as the need for more student autonomy in upper-division laboratory courses.

The Journal of Chemical Education announces a call for papers for an upcoming special issue on New Visions for Teaching Chemistry Laboratory.

As the conversation in higher education shifts from diversity to inclusion, the attrition rates of students in the STEM fields continue to be a point of discussion. Combined with the demand for expansion in the STEM workforce, various retention reforms have been proposed, implemented, and in some cases integrated into policy following evidence of success. Still, new findings, technological advances, and socio-cultural shifts inevitably necessitate an ongoing investigation as to how students approach learning. Among other factors, students who enter college without effective study skills are at much greater risk of being unsuccessful in their coursework. In order to construct an equitable learning environment, a mechanism must be developed to provide underprepared students with access to resources or interventions designed to refine the skills they need to be successful in the course. Early, reliable assessments can provide predictions of individual student outcomes in order to guide the development and implementation of such targeted interventions. In the present study, a model is developed to predict students' odds of success based on their study approaches, as measured by their responses to twelve survey items from an existing instrument used in the Chemistry Education Research literature designed to measure students' deep and surface learning approaches. The model's prediction specificity ranges from 66.5% to 86.9% by semester. Two distinct sets of lower-performing students are identified in the data: those who align predominantly with surface approaches to learning versus those who indicate using both deep and surface approaches to learning. This supports the idea of a tailored approach to interventions, rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. Results from this instrument were correlated to students' reported study methods and beliefs.

We report a new online suite of tools that enables inquiry-based active-learning activities to develop students' representational competence about atomic orbitals. Orbital Explorer is a Web site for the visualization and interactive investigation of atomic orbital properties. Orbital Explorer contains two integrated tools, namely, Atomic Orbital Explorer, which enables one to visualize and interrogate individual atomic orbitals, and Orbital RDF Comparison, which enables one to make a more detailed quantitative comparison of orbital energies and properties of orbital radial distribution functions (RDFs). In addition, we present an original chemistry educational gamification design, BingOrbital, constructed in a format resembling Bingo (American version). The game aims to reinforce the recognition of atomic orbitals based on the RDF and three-dimensional isosurface and has been applied as an engaging retrieval practice tool. A companion set of example activities that use the Orbital Explorer and BingOrbital game have been presented in another article.

Atomic orbitals represent an essential construct used to develop chemical bonding models, upon which other more advanced chemistry topics are built. In this article, we share a series of active-learning activities and a gamified approach to develop students' representational competence about atomic orbitals and to engage students in learning the properties of atomic orbitals. These properties are essential for understanding an array of fundamental concepts such as penetration and shielding, relationships such as periodic trends, and models used to describe chemical bonding. The activities employ an inquiry-based approach to engage students in exploring the relationship between atomic orbitals' spatial properties and quantum numbers. The activities guide students to collect data to verify periodic trends and construct electronic configurations. The activities utilize Orbital Explorer Web site for visualization, comparison, and analysis of atomic orbitals. The Orbital Explorer Web site is described in a related Technology Report. The activities and the game are suitable to be conducted in both in-person and remote-teaching settings.

In this guided inquiry experiment, students extract catecholase enzyme from apples to catalyze the oxidation of catechol. They follow the reaction using the UV−vis absorbance of the p-benzophenone produced to determine the Michaelis−Menten kinetic parameters. Students make selected experimental choices within a structured framework such as selecting the apple varietal, the pH of the reaction mixture, and the reaction inhibitor. The experiment has been tested at multiple universities in physical chemistry laboratory courses with both large and small enrollments. We describe the experiment and its implementation in both synchronously and asynchronously taught courses.

Nanoscale science remains at the forefront of modern scientific endeavors. As such, students in chemistry need to be prepared to navigate the physical and chemical concepts that describe the unique phenomena observed at this scale. Current approaches to integrating nanoscale topics into undergraduate chemistry curricula range from the design of new individual nano courses to broad implementation of modules, experiments, and activities into existing courses. We have developed and assessed three modular instructional materials designed to explicitly connect core physical and chemical concepts to those at the nanoscale. These modular instructional materials aim to be readily adapted to existing curricular format and have been designed based on an educational framework for analogy. The findings from a qualitative study involving undergraduate chemistry students indicate that analogical transfer from core physical and chemical concepts to those at the nanoscale can be facilitated through the use of these instructional materials. Conceptual challenges as well as evidence for analogical transfer are provided herein, along with recommendations for instructor implementation and future work.

Chemical processes can be fully explained only by employing quantum mechanical models. These models are abstract and require navigation of a variety of cognitively taxing representations. Published research about how students use quantum mechanical models at the upper-division level is sparse. Through a mixed-methods study involving think-aloud interviews, a novel rating task, and an existing concept inventory, our work aims to fill this gap in the literature and begin the process of characterizing learning of quantum chemistry in upper-division courses. The major findings are that upper-division students tend to conflate models and model components. Students, unlike experts, focus on surface features. Our data indicates two specific surface features: lexical features and a “complex equals better” heuristic. Finally, there is no correlation in our data between a student's facility with navigating models and their conceptual understanding of quantum chemistry as a whole. We analyze the data through the lens of a framework which enables us to cast model conflation as a problem of ontology.