Two-dimensional (2D) diagrams are essential in chemistry for conveying and communicating key knowledge about disciplinary phenomena. While experts are adept at identifying, interpreting, and manipulating these representations, novices often are not. Ongoing research efforts in the field suggest that students' effective use of concrete and…

Student performance in general organic chemistry courses is determined by a wide range of factors including cognitive ability, motivation and cultural capital. Previous work on cognitive factors has tended to focus on specific areas rather than exploring performance across all problem types and cognitive skills. In this study, we have categorized…

Research has shown that high school and college students have a lack of conceptual understanding of global warming, ozone, and the greenhouse effect. Most research in this area used survey methodologies and did not include concepts of atmospheric chemistry and ozone formation. This study investigates college students' understandings of atmospheric…

Active learning is becoming more prevalent in large science classrooms, and this study shows the impact on performance of being vocal during Socratic questioning in a General Chemistry course. 800 college students over a two year period were given a pre and post-test using the Chemistry Concept Reasoning Test. The pre-test results showed that…

The use of two-dimensional (2D) representations to communicate and reason about micromolecular phenomena is common practice in chemistry. While experts are adept at using such representations, research suggests that novices often exhibit great difficulty in understanding, manipulating, and translating between various representational forms. When…

The Particulate Nature of Matter and Chemical Bonding Diagnostic Instrument (Othman J., Treagust D. F. and Chandrasegaran A. L., (2008), "Int. J. Sci. Educ.," 30(11), 1531-1550) is used to investigate college students' understanding of two chemistry concepts: particulate nature of matter and chemical bonding. The instrument, originally developed…

In the 1998-99 academic year, the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manitoba reorganized its first-year course to include two types of sections: "regular sections" for students with high school chemistry grades above 70%, and "developmental sections" for students with grades between 50 and 70%. The regular sections had about 200…

The principles of sustainable development have been integrated in chemical engineering education by means of an environmental management system. These principles have been introduced in the teaching laboratories where students perform their practical classes. In this paper, the implementation of the environmental management system, the problems…

The goal of this study was to identify student misconceptions and difficulties in writing symbolic-level balanced equations for dissolving ionic compounds in water. A sample of 105 college students were asked to provide balanced equations for dissolving four ionic compounds in water. Another 37 college students participated in semi-structured…

Characterizing the modes of reasoning typically applied by students to solve different types of chemistry problems is of central importance for the design of instructional strategies that can better support their learning of specific content. Thus, the central goal of this study was to identify dominant modes of reasoning expressed by college…

This study reports the effects of student response systems (clickers) "versus" online homework on students' long-term retention of General Chemistry I course material. Long-term content retention was measured by a comprehensive yearlong American Chemical Society (ACS) GC97 exam administered seven months after students had completed the General…

This paper presents a case study from research-oriented learning in chemistry teacher education. The study evaluates the views of twenty experienced German chemistry teachers about the teaching of climate change in chemistry education. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews about the teachers' experiences and their views about…

Many studies in the chemical education literature report students' alternative conceptions in chemistry and the difficulty they present for future learning. In this paper, we review existing diagnostic tools used to uncover students' alternative conceptions in chemistry and suggest that there are two fundamental issues with such instruments,…

This paper presents preliminary data on how an assessment instrument with a unique structure can be used to identify common incorrect ideas from prior coursework at the beginning of a biochemistry course, and to determine whether these ideas have changed by the end of the course. The twenty-one multiple-choice items address seven different…

In this quantitative study, a shortened version of the Attitude toward the Subject of Chemistry Inventory (ASCI) created by Bauer (2008) was used to identify the chemistry attitudes of two populations of general chemistry students at two universities. The ASCIv2 contained just two factors from the original instrument. These factors measured…