Looking forward to the BCCE and the Fall ACS meetings. Both of these can be chances to see some of my ongoing work (or if you are at the BCCE to learn about the programming committee).
At the BCCE, Debbie and I will be presenting about our Chemistry Videos on YouTube project. One of our student researchers, will also be sharing her work as well. The ACS Fall meeting will also have a poster presentation on our YouTube project.
I’m excited to be part of the publication team on a new paper titled “Beyond active learning: Using 3-Dimensional learning to create scientifically authentic, student-centered classrooms” that just came out in PLOS-ONE. It was only possible due to a full team, led by Melanie Cooper. The team includes: Melanie M Cooper, Marcos D. Caballero, Justin H. Carmel, Erin M. Duffy, Diane Ebert-May, Cori L. Fata-Hartley, Deborah G. Herrington, James T. Laverty, Paul C. Nelson, Lynmarie A. Posey, Jon R. Stoltzfus, Ryan L. Stowe, Ryan D. Sweeder, Stuart Tessmer, Sonia M. Underwood
So, go check out the article https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0295887 I think that it will productively move the conversation to help people think more about not just engaging in active learning, but making decisions about what is being learned as much as how we help students learn.
We just wrapped up the SEISMIC Action for STEM Department Transformation conference! It was a great opportunity to reconnect with people and acted as a wonderful wrap up for the year-long on-campus SELC projects. MSU had a great showing of people and were able to highlight their great progress from the year. Now it is just time to work on the follow up research/papers from that project. Fortunately, there are several great collaborators that will be helping to move that work forward.
Now starting to think about the Departmental Action Teams and the kind of change that they may be able to make on campus…
I am really excited to have the final (expected) publication for the ChemSims project to now be published. Debbie and I pulled together a practitioner focused publication that summarizes many of the key outcomes from the 8-year long project. The article titled “Using Simulations and Screencasts in Online Preclass Activities to Support Student Building of Mental Models” was just recently published in Education Sciences. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14020115. We are excited that it is open access to allow for a broad range of educators to be able to use the lessons to inform their development of support materials when using simulations (whether for high school or college)
The article will also be part of the special issue: Engaged Student Learning and Inclusive Teaching Practices in Higher Education Chemistry. We want to thank the editors of the issue for encouragin us to submit to this journal.
Come hear our presentations at the Spring 2024 ACS meeting. I’m working on a new research project that is exploring Chemistry Educational videos on YouTube. We will talk about the framework for analyzing the videos (research talk) and Leah Zajac will be sharing our work specifically looking at videos on chemical bonding.
I’m super excited to mention a new commentary that was co-written with Debbie Herrington and Olivia Crandell! It is based on a symposium that we organized for the BCCE and provides a suggestion for how we think that the chemistry education research community could move forward to have a greater impact.
Check it out at the Journal of Chemical Education website.
Part of the research team will be presenting on our evaluation of the impact of the 3DL Fellows program and the impact that it has had on exam assessments. Check out the work by me, Iqbal Hossain, Dibakar Roy, Emily Zimmer, and Debbie Herrington. Sunday night poster session.
Thanks to the support of the LBC Undergraduate Research Fund, I’ve been able to have three new undergrads start working with me. Emily Zimmer and Dibakar Roy have been working on an evaluation of the impact of the 3DL Fellows program on the exams that the faculty write. Short answer…the program has an impact.
This semester, Leah Zajac has joined the research team and is working on the early side of a new project focused on evaluating chemistry educational videos. This seems like it will be a promising project that will provide lots of opportunities for students in the future to engage in research.
I’m excited to be able to (belatedly share) that we had an additional publication last year on the ChemSims work, this time focused on Equilibrium. The work was done with Debbie . Herrington, Shanna Hilborn, and Lizzy Sielaff. Check out “ChemSims: Using simulations and screencasts to help students develop particle-level understanding of equilibrium in an online environment before and during COVID” in Chemistry Education Research and Practice DOI: 10.1039/D2RP00063F
Both of the ChemSims publications are now out there. They can be found at:
Jessica R. VandenPlas, Deborah G. Herrington, Alex Shrode, Ryan D. Sweeder “Students’ Independent Use of Screencasts and Simulations to Construct Understanding of Atomic Interactions”, Journal of Chemical Education, (2021) DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00470 Included as part of a virtual Festschrift for George Bodner.
Brianna L. Martinez, Ryan D. Sweeder, Jessica R. VandenPlas, Deborah G. Herrington “Improving conceptual understanding of gas behavior through the use of screencasts and simulations” International Journal of STEM Education, 8, 5 (2021). DOI:10.1186/s40594-020-00261-0
I’m really excited about the fact that our work was recognized as part of the virtual Festschrift.
I also had a great publication with Merve and Sean about the SPRING program. It can be found here:
Ryan D. Sweeder, Merve N. Kursav, Sean A. Valles “A Cohort Scholarship Program that Reduces Inequities in STEM retention” Journal of STEM Education, 22,1 (2021).Available here. Open Access
