General Chemistry Course Research Articles

Understanding Le Châtelier’s principle fundamentals: five key questions

Abstract The well-known Le Châtelier’s principle is almost always mentioned when dealing with chemical equilibrium. Nevertheless, although a must in most general chemistry courses starting from the secondary level, when students face questions about it, some major misconceptions are often highlighted; to avoid this, a somewhat challenging problem is now presented. It can be deemed a very useful tool for a full understanding of this principle and chemical equilibrium as a whole. A generic chemical reaction at equilibrium is subject to different types of perturbation, and the student is required – in each case – to identify the new position of equilibrium among a number of proposals. The correct answers are finally provided along with the corresponding explanations.

Content, costs, and characteristics of United States prepharmacy curricula

IntroductionThe objective of this study was to examine pharmacy prerequisites and estimate the costs prospective students may incur to complete those requirements. MethodsPrepharmacy requirements for doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree programs in the United States (US) (n = 137) were sourced from school websites in 2018. Credit hour costs for community colleges, public four-year institutions, and private four-year institutions were collected. Chi-square and independent t-tests compared group differences. ResultsSchools required 66.12 ± 8.15 prerequisite credit hours (range 41 to 91 hours). All schools required one course in general chemistry and organic chemistry. A higher proportion of schools in 2018 required anatomy/physiology and statistics when compared to 2009. Estimated costs to complete prerequisites ranged from US $16,359 at a community college to US $187,800 for a bachelor's degree at a private institution. ConclusionsTrends in healthcare and education make it timely for schools to reconsider prerequisites. Renewed consideration should be given to identifying what is core to the profession and the minimum competencies students must demonstrate for entry into PharmD programs.

Introducing Diversity into a General Chemistry Course

Introducing Diversity into a General Chemistry Course

Relationship between Course-Level Social Belonging (Sense of Belonging and Belonging Uncertainty) and Academic Performance in General Chemistry 1

Students' social belonging in a general chemistry course has been shown to predict academic performance in that course. Additionally, students' social belonging at the beginning of a general chemistry course has been shown to differ across demographics, such as gender. This social belonging exists as both an absolute sense of belonging in the course and as an uncertainty in that belonging. Both social-belonging components are important for students' performance and retention in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. In addition to differential social belonging across demographics at the beginning of the course, social belonging can change in response to course performance. This change in social belonging may further affect performance which may further affect social belonging in a recursive spiral. In this study, we investigated the recursive effect between course-level social belonging (measured as two separate, but correlated, components: sense of belonging and belonging uncertainty) and course performance in a general chemistry 1 course delivered in a hybrid online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We found evidence that course-level social belonging and course performance interact with each other through a recursive mechanism during a semester of general chemistry 1. These findings highlight the importance of implementing inclusive interventions continuously throughout a general chemistry 1 course, particularly after key assessments, such as exams. © 2021 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

Exploring Sustainability Metrics in General Chemistry Using Intensive and Extensive Properties of Matter

As introductory chemistry courses expose students to many distinctive properties of matter, it is helpful to systematically evaluate and relate different measures such as mass, moles, and molarity, or specific heat capacity and heat capacity. Intensive and extensive designations help distinguish intrinsic and component properties of a system and are often introduced to students, but they are infrequently explored or exploited beyond introductory chapters. Intensive metrics used to address green chemistry principles include process mass efficiency, median lethal dose, and radiative forcing. These sustainability metrics build on fundamental measures introduced in general chemistry such as yield, concentration, and energy by collecting extensive components of a system with complementary intensive measures. As interdisciplinary sustainability metrics bridge scales and systems and connect chemical, environmental, and engineering concerns, they can be used to help further explain and employ concepts currently taught in a general chemistry course. This commentary serves to examine the extensive and intensive nature of measures found in a first-semester general chemistry course and classify them alongside relevant sustainability metrics. While general chemistry is not necessarily an outlet to fully explore these metrics, the introduction and exploration of these metrics, such as process mass efficiency in relation to yield, may better allow them to practice general chemistry learning objectives both inside and outside the classroom.

Effect of a Concurrent Enrollment Preparatory Course on Student Achievement and Persistence in General Chemistry

A concurrent preparatory course was developed for a university-level general chemistry course to replace prerequisite classes and online exercises implemented in previous years. The concurrent preparatory course was structured with 3 h of active learning class time. Lecture content was delivered asynchronously online. Topics were chosen on the basis of fundamental topics needed to succeed in general chemistry. Topics included both those typically found in a preparatory chemistry class as well as some simpler topics being taught in the first course of general chemistry. Two cohorts of students in a program designed to facilitate minoritized student achievement in biological sciences were compared. In the initial year of this study, a prerequisite online homework module was required. In the following year, the concurrent preparatory course was required. Students who took concurrent preparatory course did significantly better on the common final exam than those who did not.

Linking the representation levels to a physical separation and purification method in chemistry: Understanding of distillation experiment

The present investigation aims to analyze the knowledge levels and chemical representation levels of pre-service primary school teachers (PPSTs) on the experiment of distillation. For this purpose, the cross-sectional survey technique, one of the quantitative research designs was employed. The study was carried out at a Faculty of Education in the Aegean Region of Turkey with 79 freshman pre-service teachers enrolled in the Department of Primary Education. This group is of particular interest as they are the last class who had taken the General Chemistry course since this course was removed from the curriculum in 2018. A Distillation Experiment Worksheet (DEW), which consisted of 9 open-ended questions involving the macroscopic, sub-microscopic, and symbolic representations was used as data collection instrument in the study. The worksheets were analyzed with the document analysis method according to the categories created within the scope of the chemical representation levels, and these categories were established in line with direct statements of the PPSTs. Results indicated that PPSTs confused the heterogeneous and homogeneous mixtures, physical properties such as volatility and density, and they were unable to differentiate between boiling and evaporation. The most crucial result of the study was that the PPSTs had difficulties in establishing a relationship between macroscopic and sub-microscopic representations. For this reason, they could not demonstrate the interactions between solvent and solute molecules at the sub-microscopic level during molecular dissolution and they could not predict how the intermolecular interaction changes during the condensation and the distance between the particles. Based on the results of this analysis, our study provides several recommendations for lecturers in the last part of this paper.

A new approach to teaching general and inorganic chemistry

Traditional means of teaching and supervising the training of chemistry students should be updated through the introduction of information and communication technologies. The following information communication technologies are used in the educational process: electronic educational and methodological complexes, electronic textbooks, video lectures, animations; electronic laboratory and practical work, didactic tests, electronic reference books (cases, projects, organizers), etc. It is very important to use information communication technologies in teaching general and inorganic chemistry. The use of new interactive teaching technologies has advantages over traditional methods. There are also some features of the use of information communication technologies in teaching general and inorganic chemistry. The article provides a detailed analysis of the use of information communication technologies. This allowed the author to conclude that the updating of traditional teaching aids in teaching a course in general and inorganic chemistry covers the entire educational process of teaching.

Using Chemistry Concepts Inventory to Identify Alternative Conceptions and Their Persistence in General Chemistry Courses

Using Chemistry Concepts Inventory to Identify Alternative Conceptions and Their Persistence in General Chemistry Courses

Kinetics and Pathways of the Aqueous Photolysis of Pharmaceutical Pollutants: A Versatile Laboratory or Remote Learning Investigation

In this laboratory experiment, students explore the aquatic photochemical fate of ranitidine and cimetidine, two common pharmaceutical pollutants found in wastewater. It provides an engaging environmental context for students to develop knowledge of reaction kinetics and photochemistry as well as skill in using analytical instrumentation. This versatile experiment consists of two basic modules, three optional advanced modules, and additional add-ons that may be performed in various combinations to meet the unique learning objectives of general, analytical, physical, and environmental chemistry courses and science outreach activities. It may be performed as a traditional lab experiment or as an entirely remote exercise with an increased focus on data analysis and interpretation using provided example data sets. All of the photolysis experiments are carried out by preparing solutions of ranitidine or cimetidine in various matrices, irradiating the samples, and periodically removing subsamples for HPLC analysis of the compound of interest. Pseudo-first order kinetic plots are then generated to determine rate constants that are used to draw conclusions about photolysis pathways or to calculate additional kinetic parameters. In the two basic modules, cimetidine is found to degrade appreciably only when irradiated in the presence natural organic matter (NOM), indicating an indirect, photosensitized degradation pathway. In contrast, ranitidine degrades in pure buffer and in the presence of NOM with comparable rate constants, highlighting the predominant role of direct photolysis. In the advanced modules, students calculate ranitidine direct photolysis quantum yields and examine the significance of singlet oxygen as a photochemically produced reactive intermediate. The two basic modules may be completed in two 3 hour lab periods, while the advanced modules require additional time. This experiment requires only an HPLC instrument, inexpensive chemicals, and common glassware and lab equipment if performed in person and a personal computer if performed remotely.

Implementation of Asynchronous Educational Modules to Improve Student Understanding of Statistical Analysis in STEM Undergraduate Courses

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many undergraduate students have been given no other option but to take their classes remotely. This has provided many challenges for both students and instructors, especially in the STEM field due to the required laboratory coursework. For this reason, alternative methods of distance learning are needed to optimize student laboratory experiences. The sudden transition to a remote format and adjusting to a new learning environment has proven to be difficult for both students and faculty. It has also been established throughout the pandemic that students perform substantially worse in on-line coursework compared with traditional, in-person classes. Students in a general chemistry course were introduced to innovative asynchronous lab modules that could be performed at home with the additional opportunity of conducting statistical analysis tests. These modules utilize discussion boards, graphing assessments, and labs to teach students how to perform different statistical tests and to familiarize students with the DataClassroom, Google Sheets, and Microsoft Excel platforms. This asynchronous learning format will promote both overall student engagement in STEM courses and student understanding of statistical analysis, thus exhibiting the potential to implement these modules in future undergraduate STEM coursework.

Introducing Undergraduates to Primary Research Literature

All students pursuing STEM careers need to be adept at interpreting and evaluating primary research literature. The complexity of research articles requires significant practice and training in order to become skilled and efficient at this process. Thus, an early start in undergraduate education is essential and allows for development and practice through subsequent coursework and undergraduate research. The project presented here was an effort to develop fundamental literacy skills for a first semester honors general chemistry course. The curriculum included five iterative guided worksheet assignments comprising one secondary article and four related primary research articles. Each subsequent assignment was designed to be more challenging, by selecting more complicated articles and subjects, to encourage and increase literature assessment skills. Two workshops were presented after the first and third assignments to provide formal instruction on strategies to effectively read and understand research literature and promote discussion on the literature assignment articles. Assignment performance was consistently strong throughout the semester as the complexity of the assignments increased for three of the four learning objectives. However, students struggled with identifying research hypotheses despite direct instruction on this learning objective during both workshops. Pre- and post-semester survey data indicated that, while students came to the course with fairly strong confidence in their abilities to interpret and evaluate research literature, they also indicated very strong improvement in these skills by the end of the semester. These results indicate that this one-semester curriculum was an effective means to introduce students to scientific literature and develop basic literacy skills.

Examining an Acid–Base Laboratory Practical Assessment from the Perspective of Evidence-Centered Design

This paper uses evidence-centered assessment design (ECD) to structure and analyze a laboratory activity where students collect and represent titration curve data to determine acid strength in terms of molarity and dissociation constant. Following principles of multidimensional learning, the activity prompts students to demonstrate knowledge of chemistry concepts related to acid–base titrations, the science and engineering practice of using mathematics, and the cross-cutting concept of patterns. The work involved writing two multidimensional learning performances, themselves elaborated into five distinct evidence statements. In the process of coding, we further differentiated the five evidence statements into 13 components, each aligned with at least one place in the task where students could provide evidence of that component to produce results that describe how frequently the students meet the evidence statements. We describe how the evidence statements and their components give insight into whether the students are demonstrating knowledge, skills, and thinking patterns. The data consisted of laboratory reports and postlab questions of 45 students in a general chemistry course at a large public urban university. We examine the data to address the research questions “How does a process of evidence-centered assessment design with associated learning performances provide a structure for research on how students can demonstrate multidimensional learning about chemistry content knowledge?” and “How does an assessment using evidence-centered design and multidimensional learning provide insight about teaching and assessment of learning about the use of titration curve laboratory data in acid–base chemistry?” The results provide insight into the challenges and opportunities associated with having a rich, deep examination of student multidimensional learning across a two-week laboratory assessment, including the way that grading rubrics can impact whether students fully engage with all aspects of the task. Patterns observed within the student work supported conclusions about the nature of student engagement in disciplinary concepts, the practice of using mathematics, and the use of patterns on acid–base titration tasks. We also develop ways to characterize particular components for whether the component can provide single-dimensional evidence, basic multidimensional evidence by requiring use of a concept or practice as a tool, linked multidimensional evidence because a concept or practice is needed to make sense of the phenomenon in a new way, or integrated multidimensional evidence of the different dimensions working together for sense-making.

The impact of positive feedback on student outcomes and perceptions

High quality feedback on assessments and deliverables is vital to student success. This pilot study sought to understand the impact of combining positive and performance-gap feedback in an immediate feedback scenario where students were provided multiple attempts to complete an assignment. 176 online undergraduate students were surveyed after completing a general inorganic chemistry course. Some students were provided performance-gap feedback, while others were provided performance-gap and positive feedback. The results suggest that type of feedback provided does not change students’ perceptions and self-reported behaviors in the course. However, students who were provided both performance-gap and positive feedback received an average of an entire letter grade higher than the students who received only performance-gap feedback. These findings support the idea that a combination of feedback has a direct positive impact on students in an online setting.

Identifying Opportunities to Promote Systems Thinking in Catalysis Education

While several engineering and science disciplines, including biology and environmental science, have greatly benefited from adopting a systems thinking approach, its extension to chemistry education is a much more recent advancement. The initial body of literature in this direction has largely surveyed the feasibility for systems thinking in general chemistry courses. Herein, we go a step further to explore the possibilities that systems thinking present for the instruction of more advanced chemistry courses, specifically in the context of catalysis education. Since catalysis has conventionally been taught employing a reductionist perspective, we identify the opportunities and challenges for instructors in transitioning to a systems thinking teaching style. We build our analysis in accordance with the principle of constructive alignment, where we systematically address the implications for systems thinking in writing intended learning outcomes, designing learning activities, and formulating student assessments. Through a series of carefully crafted examples in homogeneous as well as heterogeneous catalysis, we illustrate how embracing systems thinking can potentially enable a paradigm shift in catalysis education.

Prompts to Promote Success: Evaluating Utility Value and Growth Mindset Interventions on General Chemistry Students’ Attitude and Academic Performance

Some students struggle with chemistry because they do not find the relevance between chemistry content and their lives or they perceive their intelligence as fixed. Social-psychological interventions (SPIs), brief interventions that target students’ subjective experiences, were developed to address these issues. As a result, SPIs have been associated with gains in students’ academic performance, attitude, and persistence in various instructional settings; however, only a limited number of studies have explored SPIs within a chemistry context. This study evaluated the effectiveness of two SPIs, a growth mindset intervention (GMI) and a utility value intervention (UVI), on promoting students’ academic performance and attitude in a general chemistry course with a large class size. This study also explored a theoretical explanation for the relationship among SPIs, attitude, and academic performance. Each SPI was designed to facilitate instructional adoption and was implemented by posting three prompts incorporated into homework assignments. The results show that the UVI led to a consistent improvement in student achievement, and among students who begin the course with lower attitudes toward chemistry, the UVI led to an improvement in students’ emotional satisfaction and utility value. The UVI’s improvement in academic performance was also observed with a group of students who have been underrepresented in the sciences, although a smaller sample size prevented finding statistical significance. The GMI improved academic performance relative to a comparison group but not to the extent observed with the UVI. The cost-to-benefit ratio associated with adopting SPIs within chemistry instruction seems highly favorable and thus warrants strong consideration among chemistry instructors.

Chemical Anthropomorphism: Acting Out General Chemistry Concepts in Social Media Videos Facilitates Student-Centered Learning and Public Engagement

This article describes the educational and public engagement outcomes of an activity called the “ChemClout Challenge” that was implemented in a general chemistry course at UC Riverside. Students worked in groups to make chemistry-themed videos, posted them to social media platforms, then voted on their favorite videos. The majority of students elected to make videos where they anthropomorphized general chemistry concepts, physically acting out principles such as ideal gas law relationships and electrolyte solubility. Students reported enjoying these anthropomorphized videos most. These types of videos received over one million views worldwide within the first month of posting on the social media platform, TikTok. After the course was over, 75 students completed voluntary Likert scale surveys to assess the educational and outreach impact of the ChemClout Challenge. Eighty-eight percent of students reported that the activity made chemistry more relatable, whereas 76% of students noted that the activity helped them retain course concepts two months after the course was completed, indicating the activity benefitted student learning. Moreover, 84% of students reported that their friends and family members outside of UC Riverside watched the videos, with 72% of students reporting that they explained the chemical concepts of their videos to their friends. These studies indicate that student-created social media videos that anthropomorphize chemistry are highly effective vectors for student-centered learning and public engagement in chemical concepts. This activity may find particular utility for educators during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it is compatible with distance learning.

Computational Chemistry Activities with Avogadro and ORCA

Computational chemistry modeling activities that took place as part of a course in physical chemistry are described. The main software tools used by the students were Avogadro and ORCA, which are freely available on the Internet for academic use. Avogadro is molecular visualization software, which can be used not only to prepare input files for a range of computational chemistry software but also to visualize output files from them. ORCA is an ab initio quantum chemistry program containing modern electronic structure methods, such as density functional theory, many-body perturbation, coupled cluster, multireference methods, and semiempirical quantum chemistry methods. Four introductory level computational chemistry activities are described for use in general chemistry and physical chemistry laboratory courses and all are suitable for virtual learning environments. Details of our implementation and the educational value of this work are discussed. In addition, a Student Assessment of their Learning Gains (SALG) survey was conducted after the implementation and the results are reported.

Narratives of undergraduate research, mentorship, and teaching at UCLA

This work describes select narratives pertaining to undergraduate teaching and mentorship at UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry by Alex Spokoyny and his junior colleagues. Specifically, we discuss how individual undergraduate researchers contributed and jump-started multiple research themes since the conception of our research laboratory. This work also describes several recent innovations in the inorganic and general chemistry courses taught by Spokoyny at UCLA with a focus of nurturing appreciation for research and creative process in sciences including the use of social media platforms.

Student Attitudes Toward Two Different Online Homework

In recent years, educators have attempted to use various methods of engagement with technology to improve student attitudes toward scientific fields. One method is shifting to online homework (OHW) systems. Attitudes toward two types of OHW are analyzed through administering surveys to students at the end of a first semester General Chemistry course. Results indicate a complicated relationship between attitudes and OHW. The traditional-responsive system is praised by students to be easy to manage, and the adaptive-responsive for its in-depth questions. Traditional-responsive system was criticized for oversimplifying and adaptive-responsive fore complexity. Furthermore, responses show there is a more complex interaction than just with the OHW system itself. Instructors should take care when selecting OHW systems for use in their classroom. Keywords: Online Homework, Student Attitudes, Qualitative Research, Adaptive-Responsive Systems, Traditional-Responsive Systems DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-6-03 Publication date: February 28 th 2021