The goal of undergraduate chemistry laboratories is to allow students to learn about chemical systems and key laboratory skills. They should then apply this knowledge to solve problems and connect macroscopic observations in the laboratory with those occurring at the submicroscopic level. Unfortunately, these needs are not met through traditional…

For the past several decades, high-enrollment undergraduate chemistry laboratory experiences have favored traditional approaches involving disparate daily experiments with optimized protocols provided to students. This model often results in poor learning outcomes and low student engagement, and it lacks any attention to scientific inquiry. Here,…

Research mentors can play an active role in helping their students develop oral communication skills by implementing formative assessment activities in their group meetings. A rubric can be used as a formative assessment tool that helps a student understand the achievement target they are working toward, where they are relative to the achievement…

The "International Research Experience for Students (IRES)" at Doane University (DU) located in Crete, Nebraska, exposed undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students to international research at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. The international collaboration team included three…

The setting of this study is a remote laboratory with a scanning electron microscope (SEM). The SEM is an advanced instrument used by scientists to characterize structures in the nanoscale. The remote SEM activity was structured to address different practices of laboratory inquiry. Secondary chemistry students were requested to prepare at home…

We designed a collaborative course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) between an Analytical Chemistry course and an Environmental Toxicology course to engage students in a research project that cannot rely on one discipline alone. This study reports on 47 students' self-reported experiences with the course outcomes and their opinions…

This paper describes an inquiry-based integrated laboratory project for green synthesis, characterization, and applications of silver and gold nanoparticles. In this project, students were able to choose their choice of plant extract as reducing and stabilizing agents, and the students also designed their own experiments. This course gave the…

Incorporating research activities at the secondary-school level is an effective method to teach science; however, students and teachers may feel intimidated when trying to identify a suitable research topic. Ideas may be obtained from short articles in periodicals or newspapers to allow students to design their own experiments and interpret data.…

This paper describes the design and effectiveness of a 360° (identified as 360) virtual laboratory tour which was implemented in a second-year undergraduate chemistry subject to familiarize the students with the research laboratory environment, equipment, and skills needed to undertake the subject and first laboratory session. We include step by…

Including undergraduate research in STEM education is a well-supported and growing high-impact practice that has been made much more scalable through integrating these experiences into the classroom. Here we describe a new biochemistry Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) that follows a design-to-data workflow with a strong…

A course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) is a teaching approach aimed at developing students' ability to conduct novel research. Although students' perceptions of their learning during CUREs may not reflect actual student learning, such surveys provide a convenient and useful metric for course evaluation. Instructors can use survey…

Faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Physics at the University of New England (UNE) have recently transformed introductory and advanced chemistry curricula by embedding the high impact practice of undergraduate research. Course Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) have provided experiential learning opportunities for over 272…

A semester-long research project for second-semester organic chemistry lab sections was developed. Student projects were based on preliminary data from faculty research that suggested the natural product neurolenin B to be a treatment for lymphatic filariasis. Students isolated neurolenins from the Central American plant "Neurolaena…

Rapid development in the field of reticular chemistry has allowed scientists ever-increasing control over the design and synthesis of crystalline porous materials. The promise that this field has in the development of next-generation materials for numerous applications (gas storage and separation, catalysis, chemical sensing, electronics) relies…

U.S. education generally portrays science from the Western perspective. As a result, students from different cultures, also referred to as nonmajority students, often struggle to relate material learned in class to their own cultures and lived experiences. Cultural relevance is gaining momentum in broader education reform movements to relate…