An online virtual escape-room game was created using the Google Forms survey app for an undergraduate chemistry lab class. Zoom video conferencing service was used to make the activity a collaborative learning experience. The theme was an escape from an abandoned chocolate factory, and the students solved problems to move to the next section or “room” on the Google Forms survey.

An escape-room-game activity was introduced to foster team building and collaborative learning in a laboratoryexperiment setting. The students were placed in a laboratory with clues and puzzles that required the students to use a sequence of analytical instruments in the laboratory in order to escape. The instruments utilized included a UV−vis spectrophotometer, an FTIR spectrometer, a gas chromatograph, and a gas chromatograph−mass spectrometer (GCMS). Student groups solved the puzzles and escaped by identifying a mystery compound at the end of the game. Student surveys indicated that the students enjoyed the lab and that they felt it was an effective review of laboratory techniques.

Within chemistry education, there are various curricular and pedagogical approaches that aim to improve teaching and learning in chemistry. Efforts to characterize these transformations have primarily focused on student reasoning and performance, and little work has been done to explore student perceptions of curricular and pedagogical transformations and whether these perceptions align with the transformational intent. To complement our previous work on the Organic Chemistry, Life, the Universe, and Everything (OCLUE) curriculum, we developed this exploratory study to determine if students had perceived the goals of the transformation. As in our previous research on OCLUE, we compared perceptions between OCLUE and a more traditional organic chemistry course. Using inductive and deductive qualitative methodologies, we analyzed student responses to three open-eneded questions focused on how students perceived they were expected to think, what they found most difficult, and how they perceived they were assessed. The findings were classified into three superodinate themes: one where students perceived they were expected to learn things as rote knowledge, such as memorization (“Rote Knowledge”), another where students perceived they were expected to use their knowledge (“Use of Knowledge”), and responses that used vague, generalized language, were uninformative, or did not address the questions asked (“Other”). Students in these two courses responded very differently to the open-ended questions with students in OCLUE being more likely to perceive they were expected to use their knowledge, while students in the traditional course reported rote learning or memorization more frequently. As the findings evolved, our interpretations and discussions were influenced by sociocultural perspectives and other cultural frameworks. We believe this approach can provide meaningful insights into transformational intent and certain features of classroom cultures.

Calls for diversity, inclusion, and equity in chemistry and science education have been ongoing. However, some faculty may find it difficult to challenge systemic inequities due to their pervasiveness. We posit that one working area for addressing systemic inequities in chemistry and science education is the removal of grading on a curve from our practices. Though this practice may be seen as traditional and "what people have always done", we offer nine critiques of this approach and how it may exacerbate systemic inequities rather than help students. These critiques challenge a variety of taken for granted assumptions about grading on a curve, including that it is more objective, is more efficient, and assists in controlling for grade inflation. Through our critiques, we hope to highlight that these assumptions are not entirely accurate and/or they act more as a sorting mechanism than as a way to evaluate learning. Using a brief history of grading in the United States, including some that speak to the evolution of grading on a curve, empirical evidence, and expert perspectives on diversity, inclusion, equity, and persistence, the aim of this paper is to use our critiques of the assumptions of grading on a curve and challenge the taken for granted beliefs about the practice. Our goal is to offer a strong argument against grading on a curve so that it becomes a working area for faculty to address systemic inequities by removing the practice from courses and adopting more informative and equitable approaches to learning and assessment.

The techniques learned in a laboratory translate into strong critical thinking aptitudes as well as adeptness in complex problem-solving within research. Typically, these laboratory skills are not acquired until a budding scientist enters graduate school since many undergraduate laboratories are more procedural than investigative. Therefore, the module in discussion was designed to aid students in developing competence toward thinking like a scientist. Through utilization of an inquiry-based approach, a laboratory involving high performance liquid chromatography was transformed into a blended online learning experiment. While students were provided in-class time to interact with their peers and the instructor and TA, the majority of the work and development was done outside of class. All background information and protocols were provided outside of the lab via an online course management system including the PowerPoint videos that students used to prepare for the experiment. The students used those materials to ultimately determine the identity and number of different steroids in an unknown sample. The objective was to determine if this approach promoted the metacognitive skills of students and encourage the use of argumentative skills when presenting and justifying claims and data.