Category: Chemistry

Looking back on ten years of Chemistry Education Research and Practice

Posted on by Michael Seery

Over the last 10 years from 2010 – 2019, Chemistry Education Research and Practice, a free-to-access journal published by the RSC (of which I am currently Editor) has published 631 articles, which have been cited 5246 times (data from Web of Science). So what has been “hot” this last decade? It seems whatever way you cut it, it was flipped learning and organic chemistry… Below I’ve cut the citation statistics a few ways – these comments are based on citations rather than judgement on the work itself.

In terms of number of citations, Keith Taber’s perspective on the chemistry triplet tops the poll, with 115 citations on Web of Science (Clarivate) and 262 on Google Scholar. In fact the top 4 hits are perspectives or reviews.

Title Authors/ Year Source Total Citations (Google Scholar) Average per Year (Google Scholar Average)  Article Type
Revisiting the chemistry triplet: drawing upon the nature of chemical knowledge and the psychology of learning to inform chemistry education Taber, Keith S. / 2013 Link 115 (262) 16.43 (37.4) Perspective
Rethinking chemistry: a learning progression on chemical thinking Sevian, Hannah; Talanquer, Vicente / 2014 Link 77 (136) 12.83 (22.7) Perspective
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and chemistry education Burmeister, Mareike; Rauch, Franz; Eilks, Ingo / 2012 Link 75 (210) 9.38 (26.2) Perspective
Flipped learning in higher education chemistry: emerging trends and potential directions Seery, Michael K. / 2015 Link 67 (145) 13.4 (29) Review
The flipped classroom for teaching organic chemistry in small classes: is it effective? Fautch, Jessica M. /2015 Link 66 (147) 13.2 (29.4) Article
Student attitudes toward flipping the general chemistry classroom Smith, J. Dominic / 2013 Link 61 (132) 8.71 (18.9) Article
A comparative study of traditional, inquiry-based, and research-based laboratory curricula: impacts on understanding of the nature of science Russell, Cianan B.; Weaver, Gabriela C. /2011 Link 54 (97) 6 (10.8) Article
Structure and evaluation of flipped chemistry courses: organic & spectroscopy, large and small, first to third year, English and French Flynn, Alison B. / 2015 Link 53 (102) 10.6 (20.4) Article
Development and validation of the implicit information from Lewis structures instrument (IILSI): do students connect structures with properties? Cooper, Melanie M.; Underwood, Sonia M.; Hilley, Caleb Z. / 2012 Link 51 (85) 6.38 (10.6) Article
Let’s teach how we think instead of what we know Talanquer, Vicente; Pollard, John / 2010 Link 49 (101) 4.9 (10.1) Article

A fairer way of looking at citations is the average number of citations per year. This means that older papers which have had a longer time to accumulate citations are averaged out. (However this is still not fair to recent papers, which will not have had a chance to be cited at all, or will not benefit from a cumulative citation effect). However, on this cut, Weaver’s paper on nature of science in the lab (this is an excellent paper which really should be better known), Cooper’s paper on IILSI, and Talanquer’s paper on teaching how to think drop out of the top 10, and the top 10 based on average citations become (new additions with *):

Title Authors Publication Date DOI Average per Year (Google average)  Article type
Revisiting the chemistry triplet: drawing upon the nature of chemical knowledge and the psychology of learning to inform chemistry education Taber, Keith S. 2013 Link 16.43 (37.4) Perspective
Flipped learning in higher education chemistry: emerging trends and potential directions Seery, Michael K. 2015 Link 13.4 (29) Review
The flipped classroom for teaching organic chemistry in small classes: is it effective? Fautch, Jessica M. 2015 Link 13.2 (29.4) Article
Rethinking chemistry: a learning progression on chemical thinking Sevian, Hannah; Talanquer, Vicente 2014 Link 12.83 (22.7) Perspective
Structure and evaluation of flipped chemistry courses: organic & spectroscopy, large and small, first to third year, English and French Flynn, Alison B. 2015 Link 10.6 (20.4) Article
Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and chemistry education Burmeister, Mareike; Rauch, Franz; Eilks, Ingo 2012 Link 9.38 (26.3) Perspective
*Flipped classroom modules for large enrollment general chemistry courses: a low barrier approach to increase active learning and improve student grades Eichler, Jack F.; Peeples, Junelyn 2016 Link 9 (20) Article
Student attitudes toward flipping the general chemistry classroom Smith, J. Dominic 2013 Link 8.71 (18.9) Article
*How flip teaching supports undergraduate chemistry laboratory learning Teo, Tang Wee; Tan, Kim Chwee Daniel; Yan, Yaw Kai; Teo, Yong Chua; Yeo, Leck Wee 2014 Link 8 (15.8) Article
*What is a hydrogen bond? Resonance covalency in the supramolecular domain Weinhold, Frank; Klein, Roger A. 2014 Link 8 (11) Perspective

Google Scholar shows much higher number of citations, as Google draws citations from a much broader range of sources. In general, while the order of articles may differ slightly, Google and Web of Science match up well, but there are some notable exceptions – James Nyachwaya’s paper Evaluation of chemical representations in physical chemistry textbooks jumps from 152nd in the Web of Science average list to 9th most average citations in Google Scholar and Bette Davidowitz’s paper on student generated micro-diagrams jumps from 72nd to 12th.

Finally, reviews and perspectives are naturally going to attract more citations, so just considering research articles, the top 10 most average citations are below. It seems it was the decade for flipped learning and organic chemistry!

Title Authors Publication Date DOI Total Citations Average per Year
The flipped classroom for teaching organic chemistry in small classes: is it effective? Fautch, Jessica M. 2015 Link 66 13.2
Structure and evaluation of flipped chemistry courses: organic & spectroscopy, large and small, first to third year, English and French Flynn, Alison B. 2015 Link 53 10.6
Flipped classroom modules for large enrollment general chemistry courses: a low barrier approach to increase active learning and improve student grades Eichler, Jack F.; Peeples, Junelyn 2016 Link 36 9
Student attitudes toward flipping the general chemistry classroom Smith, J. Dominic 2013 Link 61 8.71
How flip teaching supports undergraduate chemistry laboratory learning Teo, Tang Wee; Tan, Kim Chwee Daniel; Yan, Yaw Kai; Teo, Yong Chua; Yeo, Leck Wee 2014 Link 48 8
Development and validation of the implicit information from Lewis structures instrument (IILSI): do students connect structures with properties? Cooper, Melanie M.; Underwood, Sonia M.; Hilley, Caleb Z. 2012 Link 51 6.38
A comparative study of traditional, inquiry-based, and research-based laboratory curricula: impacts on understanding of the nature of science Russell, Cianan B.; Weaver, Gabriela C. 2011 Link 54 6
Characterizing illusions of competence in introductory chemistry students Pazicni, Samuel; Bauer, Christopher F. 2014 Link 32 5.33
Students’ interpretations of mechanistic language in organic chemistry before learning reactions Galloway, Kelli R.; Stoyanovich, Carlee; Flynn, Alison B. 2017 Link 16 5.33
Language of mechanisms: exam analysis reveals students’ strengths, strategies, and errors when using the electron-pushing formalism (curved arrows) in new reactions Flynn, Alison B.; Featherstone, Ryan B. 2017 Link 16 5.33

 

A new book on teaching chemistry in higher education

Posted on by Michael Seery

Cover webThis summer I published a very special book on teaching chemistry in higher education. Each chapter in the book contains some approach on teaching chemistry, written by someone who has implemented that approach more than once in their own setting. Chapters explain how the approaches are grounded in the literature, explain the rationale for the approach, and then go on to give some detail on the implementation and outcomes of the approach. Thus the book intends to be useful to those new or reconsidering approaches to teaching chemistry in higher education, as well as those involved in education development. While the approaches are situated in chemistry, most chapters will be relevant to many other disciplines. The book contains 30 chapters, with 452 pages. There is something for everyone!

Festschrift tweet compilationThe book is dedicated to Professor Tina Overton, and carries the subtitle of a Festschrift in her honour. Festschrift is a German word for a writing celebration in honour of a scholar, and those invited to contribute a chapter wished to celebrate her influence on their career and/or pedagogical approaches they were describing. The book idea came about when I was in Australia visiting Tina and attending an Australian chemistry conference. It was clear from the education strand of the conference that Tina’s influence in Australia was as strong as it had been in the UK and Ireland – no mean feat given she was only there three years at the time. I decided that we needed to celebrate Tina’s contribution to chemistry education in some way, and following her general lead regarding pragmatism, decided that a book describing useful approaches to teaching chemistry would be the best way to do it. Together with my co-editor Claire Mc Donnell, we invited a range of educators from Ireland, UK, and Australia to contribute chapters. The book is available on Amazon by searching for its title (UK and Ireland Amazon here).

Chapter Details

Foreword: Overton, T. L. (2019), “Foreword from Prof Tina Overton”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 1-4.

  1. Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (2019), “Introduction to the Festschrift”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 5-8.
  2. Turner, K. L. (2019), “A framework to evaluate the transition to undergraduate studies in chemistry”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 9-22.
  3. Read, D., Barnes, S. M., Hyde, J., and Wright, J. S. (2019), “Nurturing reflection in science foundation year undergraduate students”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 23-38.
  4. Ryan, B. J. (2019), “Integration of technology in the chemistry classroom and laboratory”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 39-54.
  5. Yuriev, E., Basal, S. and Vo, K. (2019), “Developing problem-solving skills in physical chemistry”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 55-76.
  6. Shallcross, D. E. (2019), “A pre-arrival summer school to solve the maths problem in chemistry”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 77-88.
  7. Lancaster, S. J., Cook, D. F. and Massingberd-Mundy, W. J. (2019), “Peer instruction as a flexible, scalable, active learning approach in higher education”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 89-104.
  8. Lawrie, G., Matthews, K. E. and Gahan, L. (2019), “Collaborative, scenario-based, open-ended, problem-solving tasks in chemistry”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 105-122.
  9. Williams, D. P. (2019), “Context- and problem-based learning in chemistry in higher education”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 123-136.
  10. O’Connor, C. M. (2019), “Approaches to context-based learning in higher education chemistry”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 137-150.
  11. Rowley, N. M. (2019), “Developing inquiring minds through learning chemistry”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 151-164.
  12. Mistry, N. (2019), “Diagnosing and addressing the issues faced when students learn stereochemistry”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 165-180.
  13. Fergus, S. (2019), “Using PeerWise to support the transition to higher education”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 181-194.
  14. Gaynor, J. W. (2019), “Student-led interviews to develop employability skills”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 195-208.
  15. Mc Donnell, C. and Murphy, V. L. (2019), “Implementing community engaged learning with chemistry undergraduates”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 209-224.
  16. Essex, J. (2019), “Implementing inquiry-based learning activities in chemistry education”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 225-236.
  17. Sedghi, G. (2019), “A sustainable peer assisted learning model for chemistry undergraduates”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 237-248.
  18. Pask, C. M. and Pugh, S. L. (2019), “Developing business and employability skills for undergraduate chemists”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 249-264.
  19. Haxton, K. J. (2019), “Undergraduate screencast presentations with self-, peer-, and tutor-assessment”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 265-282.
  20. Southam, D. C. and Rohl, B. M. (2019), “Computational thinking in the chemical sciences curriculum”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 283-300.
  21. Slaughter, J. L. and Bianchi, L. (2019), “Student-led research groups for supporting education research projects”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 301-314.
  22. Spagnoli, D., Rummey, C., Man, N. Y. T., Wills, S. S. and Clemons, T. D. (2019), “Designing online pre-laboratory activities for chemistry undergraduate laboratories”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 315-332.
  23. Capel, N. J., Hancock, L. M., Haxton, K. J., Hollamby, M. J., Jones, R. H., Plana, D. and McGarvey, D. J. (2019), “Developing scientific reporting skills of early undergraduate chemistry students”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 333-348.
  24. Seery, M. K., Agustian, H. Y. and Lambert, T. O. (2019), “Teaching and assessing technical competency in the chemistry laboratory”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 349-362.
  25. Ziebell, A., George-Williams, S. R., Danczak, S. M., Ogunde, J. C., Hill, M. A., Fernandez, K., Sarkar, M., Thompson, C. D. and Overton, T. L. (2019), “Overturning a laboratory course to develop 21st century skills”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 363-376.
  26. Thomson, P. I. T., McShannon, L. and Owens, S. (2019), “Introducing elements of inquiry in to undergraduate chemistry laboratories”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 377-390.
  27. Burnham, J. A. J. (2019), “Developing student expertise in scientific inquiry”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 391-404.
  28. Hyde, J. (2019), “Design of a three year laboratory programme for international delivery”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 405-420.
  29. Flaherty, A, Overton, T. L., O’Dwyer, A, Mannix-McNamara, P. and Leahy, J. J. (2019), “Working with chemistry graduate teaching assistants to enhance how they teach in the chemistry laboratory”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 421-434.
  30. Randles, C. A. (2019), “Developing reflective practice with graduate teaching assistants”, in Seery, M. K. and Mc Donnell, C. (Eds.), Teaching Chemistry in Higher Education: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Tina Overton, Creathach Press, Dublin, pp. 435-451.

A Framework for Learning in the Chemistry Laboratory

Posted on by Michael Seery

What is the key literature on chemistry laboratory education? What kinds of factors should be considered when designing laboratory curricula? An invite for a journal special issue gave me the final push to write something I’ve wanted to write for a long time addressing these questions. When writing it, I have in mind “typical academics”, who may be doing learning and teaching courses or people interested in broadening their reading about chemistry education. This special issue was a good place for it because it is a special issue in a “normal” chemistry journal, with the theme of chemistry education. Therefore the expected audience of the issue is the general body chemistry faculty. It was too good a chance to miss!

The article is now published. We set out our stall early with some guiding principles that we adhere to:

  1. The overarching purpose of laboratory learning is to teach learners how to ‘do’ science.
  2. Preparing students for learning in the laboratory is beneficial.
  3. Explicit consideration needs to be given to teaching experimental techniques.
  4. Consideration of learners’ emotions, motivations, and expectations is imperative in laboratory settings.

While I think this is helpful (obvs), it does expose the difficulty with considering changes to our laboratory curricula – there is a lot to think about! (We give a lot of things to think about in Table 1 of the paper). And after thinking, it takes a lot of work to implement change. I really think this is why laboratory curricula in chemistry are so resistant to change.

After explaining the four principles listed above with key references, we propose a framework, shown in the figure, which in our case at Edinburgh is oriented towards developing independence, skills, and capability to experiment (as in really experiment). Our way of doing this is to consider the progressive development of skills and competencies over the curriculum, and how each stage builds on the previous one.

framework for learning in the chemistry laboratory

We talk about each stage, with some suggestions. Initially I was reluctant to do this and indeed our original submission did not have these examples. There is so much in the literature that can be described as “good ideas in the lab” and I wanted to focus minds on prompting people to think about a model for their curriculum and not individual practicals they could add to their course without thinking about an overall framework. The reviewers and special issue editors came back with requests to add in some examples. I confess I first resisted – I really wanted to emphasise a curricular perspective. But the editors (patiently) argued that by showing some examples, we could illustrate how people might take existing published experiments and consider how to fit them into their pre-determined framework. I’m glad I was convinced that I was wrong and I think the paper is stronger because of it.

If you would like to read the paper in its full glory, head on over to:

Seery, M.K., Agustian, H.Y. and Zhang, X., 2018. A Framework for Learning in the Chemistry Laboratory. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ijch.201800093

Of course I am happy to provide pre-prints to anyone who does not have access.

Lessons from running webinars

Posted on by Michael Seery

We are now coming up to half way for the webinar series I launched this year. Webinars run monthly, thereabouts, and are on the theme of chemistry education research. I’ve never hosted webinars before so it has been interesting, and when the technology decides not to work, heart-stopping. Useful responses to a post (plea) requesting ideas/guidance are listed here. I think I have incorporated most of the suggestions.

CERGinar 2017 - 2018 Series

Some thoughts on format

What’s been a real pleasure has been the opportunity to hear speakers I love give a talk. This year, because I was testing the water, I chose speakers who I have heard and who I know will do a good job, and somewhat selfishly that I want to hear again. This led to a list of 42 names scrawled on my office noticeboard, and picking just a few of these was really tough.

Alison Flynn set us off to a stellar talk with a talk that ran the spectrum from methods of doing the research right through to implementation in teaching. This was really popular and meant that it addressed the difficulty of the breadth of audience types. Keith Taber made us think more about methodologies… are experimental approaches appropriate, and what are their limitations? Nathaniel Grove picked up on the format set by Alison, again looking at methods and then looking at implications, and this seems to be a formula that works. In both cases, this meant that a natural break in proceedings was a chance to have a mid-presentation set of questions. And that echoes something I have learned from MICER: people love to discuss. Opportunities for discussion compete with wanting to squeeze as much out of the speakers as possible, and the balance is fine tuned. For an hour slot, thought, 45/15 seems to work out. Nathan’s talk included the guest chair Niki Kaiser; this was really useful as it meant I could focus on technical matters, Niki asked questions, and it also means the whole thing is less “my” webinar series, but one of the community.

How to choose speakers?

As well as the criterion (this time around) of having seen all the speakers present, there was the difficulty of choosing just a few from my list of favourites. Donald Wink is the next speaker in the series. He gave a talk at Gordon CERP last year, which was stellar, probably the best talk I heard in a year of many conferences. It was one of those talks where you stop taking notes and just listen to try to absorb as much as possible. His clarity on discussing case studies is one that I think deserves a very wide audience. Then, we have Nicole Graulich, who won best poster at Gordon CERP, meaning she got to give a short talk at the end of the conference. I was left wanting to hear much more. Ginger is doing some amazing work around students writing, and Vicente… well we all want to hear Vicente. Both of these are again Gordon speakers. I thought that this range of speakers represented some well established figures, some newer to a wider audience, different aspects of chemistry, and a balance of gender. But I’m sure I can choose another set that will fulfill those criteria.

On and on?

Chemistry education research, as a young discipline in the UK, has two difficulties as I see it. One: there is no money. And two: as there is no money, people do a lot of this work in their spare time or squeezed into a very busy day job. That means that things like this tend to get squeezed, and it becomes difficult for people to attend. The purpose of these webinars was to act as a proxy for the academic seminars our colleagues will be used to in chemistry departments, except focussed on education.  I have to say I thought that attendance (because of point 2) would be very low, but it has been way above expectations, with lots of discussion in the chat area.

I’d be interested in hearing from people as to whether we should continue with a new series in the Autumn, and proposed ideas for format/speakers. In the mean time, do register for Prof Donald Wink’s seminar, 21st Feb. You won’t be disappointed.