10 Guiding Principles for Learning in the Laboratory – #RSCEdu Poster

#RSCPoster moved to LinkedIn this year – I am not sure it carried the same immediacy and conversation that it had on Twitter but that is probably the nature of the platform. Anyway it was nice to see a range of posters in the #RSCEdu category. I presented a poster sharing our recent publication on 10 Guiding Principles for Learning in the Chemistry Laboratory. The Poster image AltText is below the image. “What can we learn from the last decade of research about designing & teaching chemistry laboratory curricula?” We’ve compiled 10 Guiding Principles for Learning in the Chemistry Laboratory….

Influencing education practice

It seems like a long time since I wrote about preparation for Nyholm tour back in August 2022. I stated then that it was my wish to create a package of sorts that chemistry departments interested in change could use to initiate and implement reform of laboratory teaching. It is very nice to travel the country and the world sharing The Good News about what initiatives I did in my own work. A challenge – similar to the challenge of publishing work – is that while it is interesting to hear (or read) about what other people did, there are…

Revitalising the RSC Chemistry Education Research Group

The Chemistry Education Research Group (CERG) has had a difficult few years in the wake of COVID and the lovely people at RSC Networks have been working away in the background over the last year looking at how to help the group recover. CERG has had a significant impact on the landscape of chemistry education research and practice. Over the last few years its flagship activities included those who were new to chemistry education research: the Teacher-Researcher scheme which supported those who were conducting classroom based research with money and support and the CERG mentoring scheme. Before webinars were a…

Five Ground-Rules for Laboratory Reform

In preparation for my Nyholm lecture tour beginning next year I have been working on the idea of a package that chemistry departments interested in reform of their laboratory curriculum could take and use in their own setting. The intention is to take our paper on laboratory curriculum reform which presented an overarching framework for a laboratory curriculum1 and use that as a basis for tangible actions. In some useful conversations over the summer I came to the conclusion that this paper could act as a better catalyst if supplemented in (at least!) two ways: firstly, in the attempt to…

A Festschrift in honour of Professor Marcy Hamby Towns

The Journal of Chemical Education has published a Festschrift in honour of one of the great champions of chemistry education and of chemistry educators, Professor Marcy Towns. Just as I was about to board a plane to go to the Biennial Conference in Chemistry Education last month – for which Marcy was General Chair – an alert about the Festschrift being published came in. 30,000 feet higher (and $36 lighter for airplane wifi), I got stuck into reading it. It doesn’t disappoint. In his warm introduction, Jeff Raker notes some of Marcy’s achievements including the supervision of 25 graduate students…

A new PhD graduand in chemistry education

Congratulations to Xinchi Zhang for passing her PhD viva this week. Xinchi’s work explored the student voice in laboratory learning; looking at their experiences in relation to learning as well as their concepts of lab goals. Her work furthered current literature by placing these findings within a theoretical framework, and she brought in Maslow’s hierarchy in an innovative way to do this. Xinchi is a thoughtful and innovative scholar. I still remember meeting her before she undertook her research when she made a strong case for incorporating student needs into the conversation regarding lab design, and her scholarship has heavily…

Describing different types of virtual labs

Recently I spoke in Dublin at the 2nd DCU Virtual Labs Seminar Series. DCU and others are working in a project led by Chemistry at Maynooth University, funded by the Irish Government’s Human Capital Initiative. The focus of the presentation was on design of virtual settings – in particular bringing together (1) what we know about learning in complex settings such as labs, (2) what we know about learning in general, and (3) what we know about good e-learning design, and in the talk I ran through a prototype case study of designing a virtual HPLC experiment with these three…

2: What do out want to find out? Defining your research question*

This section covers a major aspect of thinking about your research project – your research question. It is a long section and has a lot of detail. You will likely use this section several times; at first to get a general overview of the research approach, and again throughout your project as you define your question, think about your methods, and reflect on your research approach. In the first reading your aim is to get a general sense of what a research question is and why we use them in education research. At the heart of the research process is…

1. What is chemistry education research?

An overview of education research Education research is an academic discipline which focusses on exploring all aspects of education. This includes finding out about what students know, how students learn, and investigating teaching approaches. Its focus can range from one student’s learning to a national education system, to a teaching approach across many different contexts. The assumed rationale for completing education research is to find out more, and hence improve teaching and learning at all levels of education. Based in theory Education research has some particular characteristics. As an academic discipline, it builds on educational theory. This means that an…

Introducing “A guide to completing your undergraduate chemistry education research project”

I have been lucky to supervise many undergraduate students as they complete their final year education research projects. It’s an exciting time as students bring their enthusiasm, interest, and knowledge to a fresh project each year. It is also a challenging task; students who are expert in their own discipline such as chemistry have to learn new terminology and new ways of approaching research, that may seem unfamiliar. The time constraints of a final year undergraduate study adds to the challenge: completing a research project in a new area that is the basis of an academic thesis in 6 –…