Reformed Experimental Activities (REActivities): Gauging the Fidelity of Implementation in a Reformed Undergraduate Organic Chemistry Laboratory.

Reformed Experimental Activities (REActivities) is an innovative approach to the delivery of the traditional material in an undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory. To better understand the fidelity of implementing this pedagogy and what effects the framework of REActivities has on student-instructor interactions, an observational protocol study was employed. This paper also describes the Evaluation of Lab Instructor Time and Engagement (ELITE) observational instrument developed to evaluate instructional behaviors in a lab setting.

Sign Language Incorporation in Chemistry Education (SLICE): Building a Lexicon to Support the Understanding of Organic Chemistry.

Historically, deaf and hard-of-hearing students (D/HH) who solely rely on an interpreter during organic chemistry lecture courses at the Rochester Institute of Technology consistently performed below the average in the class. A barrier attributed to this D/HH student performance is the lack of standardized methods in sign language to effectively communicate the organic chemistry terminology. As such, our group worked to address this challenge through a deliberate effort to develop a lexicon of insightful signs/classifiers that convey organic chemistry vocabulary as well as descriptive expansions to demonstrate challenging concepts.