Julia speaks to Barb Termaat, Executive director of Newton's Road, in Traverse city Michigan to discuss bringing STEM into the northwestern Michigan community.

In this episode Julia talks with Dr. Henry "Hoby" Wedler and Professor Dean Tantillo about their experience adding a new vision to learning at UC Davis and how it has affected their work outside of the classroom. 

Join Julia as she talks with Dr. Michelle Thompson, an instructor at the Effingham College and Career Academy, who uses a STEM-focused curriculum in her classroom. Dr. Thompson also gives insight into her students involvement in the WestEd study for the Kasi project.

Join Julia as she talks with Michael Seery the outgoing editor-in-chief of the Chemistry Education Research and Practice journal and Gwen Lawrie the incoming editor-in-chief. They go into the submission and review process of research papers.

How can two classrooms in different countries work together to improve teaching chemistry? Listen as Julia discusses collaborative education with chemistry professors, Brett McCollum of Mount Royal University in Calgary Canada, and Layne Morsch of the University of Illinois in Springfield US.

Britland Dekorver, a Professor of Chemistry at Grand Valley State University, catches up with Julia about the popular Facebook community she founded and grew. They discuss how it helps teachers and students, especially during this time where remote learning has grown exponentially.

What ideas do students have for online education?

We talk with Tanjot Grewal of McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) and Nicole Kada of Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) about the student perspective about the coming online semester. What are some of the ideas they bring to make online learning more effective? How does accessibility for all students play a part in this discussion? What are the silver linings, if any, from this shift to online during the Covid-19 pandemic? We end on a hopeful note about the future!

Julia talks with Bellevue College faculty member Jennie Kong Mayer and her organic chemistry student Rizmina Lathiff about features she used with Zoom to make her online class more interactive. We caught up with Jennie after a post in ChemEdX.org about the methods she used to build community and engagement in her summer organic chemistry class. I was so used to seeing my students in person and then we would meet online. But with this spring quarter going completely online, it was like we were all complete strangers. So, do you create that classroom feeling in a virtual setting? That’s the question that Jennie tries to answer in the podcast!

Lab flow was designed to wrap digital curriculum around the traditional lab, wet bench experience that we're all trying to give students, which I think it's very important. But starting in April, when schools started closing down, we had a number of institutions who were using our software and they said, could you help us?

We explore more in this conversation: lab simulations, home labs, badging, how to structure a lab class in the pandemic, and even cheating. Be ready for the fall classes with this great conversation.

Thanks to Jamie Caras for the difference he is making in helping lab instructors and students who want to learn!

In today's episode, Julia Winter sits down with Professor Renee Link of UC Irvine and talks about how she implemented the Specs Grading method in teaching a 1000-student organic chemistry lab course. Find out what Specs grading is, and why it changes the nature of assessment in teaching and learning. Fascinating!