This paper describes an innovative method to evaluate students' learning after teaching the topic of stereochemistry using molecular models in an organic chemistry course for second-year pharmacy students at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University. This method is practical and relevant and directly measures the intended learning skills. It is…

In this study, adults naïve to organic chemistry drew stereoisomers of molecules and explained their drawings. From these explanations, we identified nine strategies that participants expressed during those explanations. Five of the nine strategies referred to properties of the molecule that were explanatorily "irrelevant" to solving the…

IUPAC nomenclature competence (INC)--defined as the ability to name chemical structures using IUPAC rules and draw structures from IUPAC names--is considered a foundational skill in the training of professional chemists. For students of non-European language background, the challenge of acquiring INC is often complicated by the fact that IUPAC…

Models that are used to predict and explain phenomena related to molecular vibration and rotation are ubiquitous in physical chemistry, and are of importance in many related fields. Yet, little work has been done to characterize student use and application of these models. We describe the results of a multi-year, multi-institutional qualitative…

A computational laboratory experiment investigating molecular models for hexagonal boron-carbon-nitrogen sheets (h-BCN) was developed and employed in an upper-level undergraduate chemistry course. Students used the Avogadro user interface for molecular editing and the WebMO interface for the quantum computational workflow. Density functional…

In both 2016 and 2019, the NCLEX-RN (National Council Licensure Examination -- RN computerized exam) test plan outlined 15% of content as "pharmacological and parenteral therapies". The test plan also includes physiological sciences. The topics of pharmacology encompass the review of drug action in living organisms, such as humans. As…

Learning to interpret organic structures not as an arrangement of lines and letters but, rather, as a representation of chemical entities is a challenge in organic chemistry. To successfully deal with the variety of molecules or mechanistic representations, a learner needs to understand how a representation depicts domain-specific information.…

Nanotechnology will be among the most needed workforce areas in the near future. It is also a creative and highly dynamic field of innovative research areas that displays numerous open fields for future graduates. The central thesis of this paper is to better understand undergraduate engineering students' awareness, exposure, and motivation…

An augmented reality (AR) application and an activity worksheet have been developed to support students in visualizing the concepts involved when solving [superscript 1]H NMR problems. This instructional resource was designed to encourage conceptual problem-solving and prevent memorization by eliminating the use of chemical shift tables. It uses…

Project-based (research-driven) laboratory courses stimulate student involvement, improve critical thinking and initiate cooperative learning. To this end, a 7-week laboratory project was designed for a sophomore cell biology course to reinforce the fundamental relationship between genotype and phenotype using yeast alcohol dehydrogenase I (ADH1).…

The effect of surfactant adsorption on surface tension, as well as associated thermodynamic concepts are introduced in a laboratory experiment designed for undergraduate students. Using a reliable and accessible method, students measure the surface tension of aqueous solutions at different concentrations of sodium dodecyl sulfate. Students collect…

Scientific disciplines spanning biology, biochemistry, and biophysics involve the study of proteins and their functions. Visualization of protein structures represents a barrier to education and research in these disciplines for students who are blind or visually impaired. Here, we present a software plugin for readily producing variable-height…

Metabolomics is the data-driven science of small molecules. Untargeted metabolomics, using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS), differs greatly from targeted metabolite assays, using nominal mass LC-MS instruments, as it generates thousands of metabolite features which are not quantified and are identified "post…

At an advanced stage of learning quantum chemistry, undergraduate students usually encounter simple Hückel-molecular-orbital (HMO) theory, whose primitive approach gives very useful insight into the electronic structure of p-conjugated molecules. However, on one hand, computational HMO software, when programmed without using molecular symmetry,…

The laboratory practice "Primary culture and directional differentiation of rat bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs)" is part of a required course for sophomore medical students at Tongji university, which has been conducted since 2012. Blended learning has been widely applied in medical courses. Based on a student-centered…