The central component of a chemistry PhD program is the research group, where advisors have significant impact on students' professional development and career path. Current literature indicates that communication issues of advisor-advisee relationships in some graduate programs arise because of the perceived power imbalance in advisor-advisee…

The Case Study (CS) method is a teaching methodology based on constructivism and centered on students, which actively develops their learning. Through the study of a case, which can be a real or fictional story based on everyday life, the student is asked to solve a dilemma and thus is expected to develop higher skills. Through this systematic…

Apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP or abasic) sites are deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) lesions that result from the loss of a nucleobase by hydrolysis of the "N"-glycosyl bond. AP sites are the most frequent lesions in cells and are caused by environmental and cancer therapeutic genotoxins. Herein, the bicinchoninic colorimetric assay, typically…

The use of mass spectrometry (MS) is becoming widespread and rather routine in all levels of industry, government, and academia. Coupled with chromatographic methods, this powerful instrumental technique can be used to elucidate the composition of a complex sample and definitively identify constituents while offering the benefits of high-precision…

Successful demonstration of lipid assembly chemistry to a general audience can be challenging on both physical (nanoscopic dimensions of lipid assemblies) and intellectual (complex, interconnected concepts) accounts. Quite often, an instructor has to leave key concepts out of what is being offered due to time constraints, which unfortunately…

The purpose of this paper is to share the iterative process we used to design a task that elicits causal mechanistic reasoning and how the subsequent student responses can be analyzed. Our goal in this task is to strike a balance between eliciting as much student knowledge as possible without providing so much structure that the answer becomes…

The NMR spectrometer is a commonly used spectroscopic instrument that records resonance frequencies of nuclei present in molecular systems. While the NMR frequencies fall within the radio frequency regime for a given molecular system, they are presented in terms of chemical shifts in the audio frequency regime, thereby having the versatility to be…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an acclaimed educational concept for laboratory teaching in chemistry, which significantly affects learner motivation. A central aim of PBL is to overcome educational problems with "cook-book" laboratories. For example, when students receive experimental instructions and apply the instructions similar to…

We reported a redesign of a physical chemistry laboratory course (CHEM 166) for our chemistry majors at the University of Vermont carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic. We started to teach this course after a curriculum reform, which split an upper-division undergraduate laboratory course into physical and analytical chemistry laboratories. To…

Teaching and learning became more challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic as classes moved online for both remote and hybrid learning. For hybrid learning, instructors harnessed various technologies to facilitate student-teacher engagement. Here we explored the use of an online collaborative platform, Miro Board, to aid teaching of organic…

The knowledge of the mechanical properties of polymers and other materials is essential for several tasks in the field of materials science, like component design and material development. The tensile test is one method of determining many of the material's most defining mechanical characteristics. However, the teaching of laboratory experiments…

This paper reports the development of a digital escape room for high school students using Genially, a web-based media platform. The escape room was used to aid understanding of basic concepts in chemistry and mostly enhance students' classes participation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The activity entitled "The thalidomide mystery"…

We describe a guided-inquiry laboratory experiment for instrumental analysis in which our students test an improved protocol for the recycling of silver chloride to produce nontoxic waste. Students are provided with samples of silver chloride that they created as waste products in a previous lab experiment and tasked with performing a stepwise…

Scientific instruments have long been a vital part of science, paving pathways to remarkable scientific advancements. Such advancements have changed the world both socially and culturally, especially in the past few decades. Students can be introduced to this idea through the concepts of nature of science (NOS): scientific observations are often…

Dropout and low academic performance at university level constitute a big current challenge. In this work, materials comprising different interactive tools were developed following instructional design, rooted in the cognitive load theory. They were applied in a first-year lecture chemistry course to tackle low academic performance and high…