Step Back, Translate, and Extend: An Instructional Framework for Enhancing Knowledge Transfer and Self-Efficacy Across Chemistry Courses

The Organic and Biochemistry Readiness Instrument (OBRI) is a concept inventory to assess essential concepts covered in general chemistry with an emphasis on the topics most relevant to organic chemistry and biochemistry that students must transfer between disciplines. General chemistry is the first prerequisite course that introduces students to fundamental topics which, when mastered, can facilitate a student's success and ability to integrate multidisciplinary material in chemistry courses. Course instructors of upper-level chemistry courses, such as in organic chemistry and biochemistry, must find a balance in distributing their time between reviewing prior concepts from earlier courses that students need to build upon and expanding students' knowledge with new material most pertinent to their respective courses. This work details the development and validation of an instrument to assess student preparedness for organic chemistry and biochemistry, which occurred in three phases: validation (content validity, face validity, and response process validity), a field test, and data collection with the final version of OBRI in three different levels of General Chemistry. Results demonstrate concurrent validity through OBRI's ability to differentiate between students completing the introductory, advanced, and intensive general chemistry course sequences. Additionally, reliability was assessed for the instrument, and significant correlations were observed between students' scores on OBRI and their eventual grades in organic chemistry and biochemistry. The data informed general chemistry instructors on strengths as well as weaknesses in the curriculum with which they could make effective modifications to best prepare students as they proceed to subsequent, higher level chemistry courses. Overall, the instrument is an effective tool that provides an efficient way to measure student readiness for organic chemistry and biochemistry.

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Development of the Organic and Biochemistry Readiness Instrument: Assessing Student Preparedness for Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry

Torres,

Pulminskas,

Abrams

2024

“…This initiative complements Freire’s problem-posing concept of education in which the lines separating teacher from student are blurred such that liberatory knowledge is coconstructed as a critical process of self- and societal-transformation. These ethical initiatives encourage chemistry instructors to consider, “For whom and why do you teach?” For example, while maximizing students’ retention in STEM or STEM-related fields has justifiably motivated practitioners and researchers, , the implied deception that chemistry knowledge is only for those in such fields is concerning. We endorse chemistry education for all by encouraging instructors to problematize systems of oppression and produce local change per the agendas of students and their communities.…”

Section: Applying and Navigating Epistemic Integrity: What Does Ethic...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Navigating and Applying Epistemic Integrity” as a Missing Science Practice: Re-envisioning Ethics for Both Undergraduate Chemistry Students and Instructors

Wu,

Rodriguez

2024

Recent national calls have emphasized the importance of undergraduate student engagement in science practices. While there have been efforts to consider the practices of professional scientists in teaching contexts, conversations integrating academic integrity and its professional analog, scientific integrity (i.e., research ethics), are relatively underexplored. In other words, the extensive research around both topics remains parallel, warranting a unified view to support students with authentic engagement in science practices. Thus, in this perspective piece, we present epistemic integrity as a missing science practice for re-envisioning and centering ethics in undergraduate-level chemistry classrooms. Responding to a greater need for specificity and practicality, we begin by operationalizing epistemic integrity for chemistry-specific contexts. Next, we offer examples of epistemic integrity for both chemistry students and instructors. Finally, we conclude with an example of how practices using epistemic integrity can be realized in an instructional laboratory setting. Modern issues are becoming more complex and the middle gray area separating what is ethically appropriate and inappropriate continues to expand. To this end, we encourage the chemistry education community to leverage epistemic integrity to advance both equity and excellence throughout the undergraduate chemistry experience.

“…Bioscience involves detailed chemical information, such as the structure and properties of small organic or inorganic biomolecules, their interactions and roles in biological processes, and biochemical mechanisms. The last two exercises about ligand efficiencies and docking, respectively, are therefore especially well-suited for teaching chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, and/or medicinal chemistry. Here, students learn how to design and draw the structures of organic compounds and their various derivatives using the built-in Editor tool available in the ChEMBL database as ligands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Video-Based Bioinformatics Tutorials Developed as an Open Educational Resource to Improve Students’ Understanding and Practice in Data Science Analyses

Amtul,

Vuu,

Lubrick

et al. 2024

With the development of digital pedagogical resources, courses, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rise in the use of video-based learning (VBL) and teaching as one of the primary methods of instruction. Additionally, in recent years, bioinformatics has surfaced as an integral discipline in life sciences, where scientists are able to manipulate and analyze large sets of data. As a result, the need for digitally enhanced undergraduate and graduate teaching of basic bioinformatics skill sets of an applied nature has become increasingly high. Here, we designed and implemented a set of video-based bioinformatics tutorials as an open educational resource to be taught in an online synchronous, asynchronous, as well as HyFlex setting. These tutorials were designed to identify a ligand against unknown amino acid and nucleotide sequences to unveil their context in diverse species. This was achieved by navigating online bioinformatic databases, performing multiple sequence alignment, phylogenetic analyses, protein structure prediction/comparison, and docking. In the end, students also completed a survey questionnaire outlining their experience with the VBL. By the end of the term, VBL enabled the students to learn and apply bioinformatic concepts and tools to predict the protein structure from an unknown sequence and dock it with the ligands. Students rated VBL as one of the most powerful learning mediums out of many used as part of the module. Bioinformatic videos, besides capturing and distributing the bioinformatic information, also provided an invigorating environment where students better learned, understood, and retained the content.