Chemical education research

Every field of knowledge has two aspects: a practice component, and research into the advancement of the discipline. Chemical education is the same. Chemical education research (CER) aims to evaluate improvements and innovation in practice and also investigate how students learn chemistry. Examples illustrate the scope of CER, with analogies to better well-known examples of research in chemistry.<br /><br />One recurring theme in chemical education is the improvement of existing laboratory exercises, the development of new laboratory exercises, and the testing of the activities to ensure their scientific validity and robustness, and finally evaluation and feedback to assess the effectiveness of the experiment by students and teaching staff. <br /><br />Another active area of research is the analysis of curriculum in terms of logical versus psychological progressions of topics order, and trials on better sequences of topics for better outcomes.<br /><br /> have lead to advances in chemistry, with microwave-assisted synthesis, microfluidic devices, and better spectrometers to name just a few. So too, advances in technology have changed the practice of chemical education. <br /><br />Other CER has examined new uses for mobile phones, using podcasts to enhance lectures, as flashcards, or to access chemistry resources, student-created videos and photo blogs, and other advances in technology. <br /><br />Yet another area of CER is in the development and validation of these survey instruments. <br /><br />Research is about collecting proof to support or refute a hypothesis. Chemical education research is no different. Chemical education seeks to improve the learning of chemical science. Chemical education research collects data to evaluate whether a particular course of action is good or bad for learning.