Our Research

Papers, Presentations and Awards

We've been around for nearly twenty years, developing activities, assessing their use, and spreading the word in efforts to improve chemistry teaching and learning. Click below to view some of our recent work:

Papers

Ya’akov (Kobi) Gal, Oriel Uzan, Robert Belford, Michael Karabinos and David Yaron, “Making Sense of Students’ Actions in an Open-Ended Virtual Laboratory Environment”, Journal of Chemical Education, Vol. 92, No. 4, pp. 610–616. 2015.
Jodi L. Davenport, Gaea Leinhardt, James Greeno, Kennith Koedinger, David Klahr, Michael Karabinos, and D. Yaron, “Evidence-Based Approaches to Improving Chemical Equilibrium Instruction”, Journal of Chemical Education, Vol. 91, No. 10, pp. 1517-1525. 2014.
Ofra Amir, Kobi Gal, David Yaron, Michael Karabinos and Robert Belford, “Plan Recognition and Visualization in Exploratory Learning Environments”. In Educational Data Mining. Springer International Publishing. pp. 289-327, 2014.
David Yaron, “Reflections on the Curriculum Framework Underpinning the Redesigned Advanced Placement Chemistry Course”. Journal of Chemical Education, Vol. 91, No. 9, pp. 1276-1279. 2014.
Bruce M. McLaren, Tamara van Gog, Craig Ganoe, Michael Karabinos and David Yaron. “Exploring the Assistance Dilemma: Comparing Instructional Support in Examples and Problems”. In Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Springer International Publishing. pp 354-361, 2014.
David Adamson, Colin Ashe, Hyeju Jang, David Yaron, and Carolyn Rosé, “Intensification of group knowledge exchange with academically productive talk agents”. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Madison, Wisconsin. July, 2013.
Colin Ashe, and David Yaron, “Designing analogy-based simulations to teach abstractions”, In J.P. Suits and M. J. Sanger (Eds.), ACS Symposium Series: Pedagogic Roles of Animations and Simulations in Chemistry Courses, American Chemical Society, pp. 367-388, 2013.
Jodi Davenport, Anna Rafferty, Michael Timms, David Yaron and Michael Karabinos. "ChemVLab+: Evaluating a Virtual Lab Tutor for High School Chemistry." The Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference of the Learning Sciences. Sydney, Australia. 2012.
Ryan S.J.d. Baker, Gregory R. Moore, Angela Z. Wagner, Jessica Kalka, Aatish Salvi, Michael Karabinos, Colin A. Ashe and David Yaron, "The Dynamics Between Student Affect and Behavior Occuring Outside of Educational Software.", in S. D'Mello, A. Graesser, B. Schuller, J Martin (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th bi-annual International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction. Springer Berlin Heidelberg: Berlin, Heidelberg, Vol. 6974, pp. 14-24. 2011.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt, James Greeno, Jodi Davenport, Bruce McLaren, Laura Bartolo, John Portman, Colin Ashe, W. Craig Carter and Donald Sadoway., "Instruction Online: Core Components for Reuse", in R. Belford, J. W. Moore, and H. E. Pence (Eds.), Enhancing Learning with Online Resources, Social Networking, and Digital Libraries Washington, DC, pp. 235-262. 2010.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Donovan Lange, James G. Greeno, and Gaea Leinhardt. "The ChemCollective: Virtual labs and online activities for introductory chemistry courses", Science, Vol. 328, No. 5978. April, 2010.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Karen Evans, Jodi Davenport, Jordi Cuadros and James Greeno. "Learning Chemistry: What, When, and How?", In Mary Kay Stein and Linda Kucan (Eds.), Instructional Explanations in the Disciplines (pp. 41-50). Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2010.
Alex Borek, Bruce McLaren, Michael Karabinos and David Yaron, "How Much Assistance Is Helpful to Students in Discovery Learning?", In U. Cress, V. Dimitrova, & M. Specht (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, Learning in the Synergy of Multiple Disciplines (EC-TEL 2009), LNCS 5794, September/October 2009, Nice, France. (pp. 391-404). Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. 2009.
Jodi Davenport, David Yaron, Ken Koedinger and David Klahr, "Development of Conceptual Understanding and Problem Solving Expertise in Chemistry", In B. C. Love, K. McRae, & V. M. Sloutsky (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 751-756). Cognitive Science Society, 2008.
Jodi Davenport, David Yaron, David Klahr and Ken Koedinger, "When do diagrams enhance learning? A framework for designing relevant representations", In B. C. Love, K. McRae, & V. M. Sloutsky (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 191-198). Cognitive Science Society, 2008.
David Yaron, Jodi Davenport, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt, Laura Bartolo, John Portman, Cathy S. Lowe, Donald Sadoway, W. Craig Carter and Colin Ashe. "Cross-Disciplinary Molecular Science Education in Introductory Science Courses: An NSDL MatDL Collection" in Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries (pp. 70-73). Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., 2008.
Karen Evans, Gaea Leinhardt and David Yaron, "Learning stoichiometry: A comparison of text and multimedia formats", Chemistry Education: Research and Practice, Vol 9. May, 2008.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Karen Evans, Jordi Cuadros, Jodi Davenport, Gaea Leinhardt and James G. Greeno, "The ChemCollective Digital Library", Paper Presented on CONFCHEM Online Conference, Spring 2008.
Jordi Cuadros, Gaea Leinhardt, and David Yaron, "One firm spot: the role of homework as lever in acquiring conceptual and performance competence in college chemistry", Journal of Chemical Education, Vol 84 No. 6. June, 2007.
David Yaron, Gaea Leinhardt, Karen Evans, Jordi Cuadros, Michael Karabinos, William McCue and David Dennis, "Creation of an online stoichiometry course that melds scenario based leaning with virtual labs and problem-solving tutors", Paper Presented on CONFCHEM Online Conference, Spring 2006.
Karen L. Evans, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt, and David Yaron, "Chemistry in the field and chemistry in the classroom: A cognitive disconnect?", Journal of Chemical Education, Vol 83 No. 4. April, 2006.
David Yaron, Jordi Cuadros, Gaea Leinhardt, Emma Rehm, Michael Karabinos and Tim Palucka, The ChemCollective: Monitoring the Path from Seeing to Using to Contributing. Internal project report, 2005.
David Yaron, Jordi Cuadros, Gaea Leinhardt, Karen L. Evans and Michael Karabinos, "Virtual Laboratories and Scenes to Support Chemistry Instruction", in About Invention and Impact: Building Excellence in Undergraduate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Education, Proceedings from National Science Foundation Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (NSF-CCLI) program conference, Arlington, Virginia, 2004, edited and prepared by NSF. April, 2005.
David Yaron, Gaea Leinhardt, Michael Karabinos, "Shape, Transformation, and Energy: Critical Resources for Thinking in Chemistry", Internal report submitted to the SCALE Project, 2004.
Dave Yaron, Karen Evans, and Michael Karabinos "Scenes and Labs Supporting Online Chemistry"' Paper Presented at the 83rd Annual AERA National Conference, April 2003.
David Yaron, D. Jeff Milton and Michael Karabinos, "A Digital Library Architecture that Promotes Creation and Use of Modifiable Student Activities", Developing Digital Libraries for K-12 Education, Edited by Marcia Mardis. ERIC IT Clearinghouse, 2003.
Dave Yaron, D. Jeff Milton and Rea Freeland, "Linked Active Content for Digital Libraries for Education", Journal of Digital Information, May 2002. (Vol 2, Iss 4).

News Articles and Recognitions

May 2014, our murder mystery scenario, Mixed Reception was highlighted in the Big Deal Book of Technology May 2014 eNewsletter.
April 2010, Science Prize for Online Resources in Education ( SPORE ) Award Recipient
January 2009, Awarded "4 Star rating" by Schoolzone, the UK's leading evaluation service for online educational resources.
March 2007, Awarded "Highly Recommended" by Schoolzone, the UK's leading evaluation service for online educational resources.
October 2006, "Chemistry Games", Feature in Gameology
January 2005, Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) Digital Dozen
October 2004, "Solve a mystery!", Chem.matters.links section of ChemMatters Magazine
August 2003, Merlot Classic and Editors' Choice Awards
November 2003, "No Spill Chemistry Lab", Science's Netwatch

Workshops, Presentations and Demonstrations

David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport, Colin Ashe and Gaea Leinhardt. “Using ChemCollective materials in your flipped classroom”, Presented at the 2014 Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Grand Valley State University, Grand Valley, Michigan, August, 2014.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Colin Ashe, Jodi Davenport and Gaea Leinhardt “ChemCollective materials for hybrid courses”, Presentation at the American Chemical Society National Meeting - Fall 2014, San Francisco, August 2014.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Kobi Gal and Ofra Amir. “Can log files from student problem solving in open-ended environments reveal student's strategies and goals, thereby providing a scalable alternative to think-aloud studies?”, Presented at the 2014 Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Grand Valley State University, Grand Valley, Michigan, August, 2014.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport and Anna Rafferty, “Eight contextualized chemistry activities that combine virtual labs with formative assessments”, Presentation at the 23rd International Conference on Chemistry Education (ICCE 2014) at the University of Toronto, in Toronto, Canada, July 2014.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Colin Ashe, Jodi Davenport, Anna Rafferty “ChemCollective materials for high school classrooms”, Presentation at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit Science Teacher Workshop, Pittsburgh PA, April, 2014.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Kobi Gal, Ofra Amin, Jodi Davenport and Anna Rafferty, “Assessing student actions in virtual environments through activity log file visualizations”, Presentation at the American Chemical Society National Meeting - Spring 2013, New Orleans, LA, April 2013.
Jodi Davenport, Michael Timms, David Yaron and Michael Karabinos. “ChemVlab+: Supporting Science Learning Using a Virtual Chemistry Lab With Embedded Assessments”, Paper presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Vancouver, B.C., available in the AERA Online Paper Repository.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport, Laura Bartolo, John Portman, Colin Ashe, W. Craig Carter and Donald Sadoway, “How molecular structure and motion lead to emergent macroscopic properties”, Presentation at the Materials Research Society Annual Spring Meeting, San Francisco, California. April, 2010.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport, Jordi Cuadros, Gaea Leinhardt, Jim Greeno, Karen Evans, Laura Bartolo, John Portman, Colin Ashe, W. Craig Carter, and Donald Sadoway. “What is conceptual learning in chemistry and why should we promote it?”, Presented at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. November, 2009.
David J. Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt and James G. Greeno. “The ChemCollective: Virtual Labs, Tutors and Scenario Based Learning for Introductory Chemistry”, 43rd Annual Meeting of the Middle Atlantic Association of Liberal Arts Chemistry Teachers, Washington College, Maryland. November, 2009.
David J. Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Alexander Borek, Bruce McLaren, Karen L. Evans, and Gaea Leinhardt. “Tracking and supporting learning in open-ended activities involving a virtual lab simulation”, The 238th American Chemical Society National Meeting, Washington, DC. August, 2009.
David J. Yaron and Michael Karabinos. “Free Online Resources for Teaching and Learning Introductory Chemistry”, Workshop presented at ChemEd 2009, Radford University, Radford, Virginia. August, 2009.
David J. Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt and James G. Greeno. “The ChemCollective: Virtual Labs, Tutors and Scenario Based Learning for Introductory Chemistry”, Central Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. May, 2009.
David J. Yaron, Donald R. Sadoway, Laura M. Bartolo, Gaea Leinhardt, Colin Ashe, John J Portman, W. Craig Carter, Michael Karabinos, and Jodi Davenport. “Cross-disciplinary molecular science education in introductory science courses”, The 237th American Chemical Society National Meeting, Salt Lake City, Utah. March, 2009.
Dave Yaron, Jodi L. Davenport, James Greeno and Michael Karabinos. “Conceptual development in chemical equilibrium”, Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. July, 2008.
Karen Evans, Gaea Leinhardt, and Dave Yaron. “Learning stoichiometry: A comparison of text and multimedia formats”, Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. July, 2008.
Dave Yaron, Jodi L. Davenport, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt, Laura Bartolo, John Portman, Cathy Lowe, Don Sadoway, Craig Carter and Colin Ashe. “Cross-disciplinary molecular science education in introductory science courses”, Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. July, 2008.
David J. Yaron, "Digital Libraries to Support Problem Solving and Conceptual Learning in Introductory Chemistry", Gordon Research Conference on Physics Education Research and Practice, Bryant University, Smithfield, RI. June, 2008.
Dave Yaron, Jodi L. Davenport, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt, Laura Bartolo, John Portman, Cathy Lowe, Don Sadoway, Craig Carter and Colin Ashe. "Cross-disciplinary molecular science education in introductory science courses: An NSDL MatDL Collection." Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. June, 2008.
David J. Yaron, Jodi Davenport, Michael Karabinos, James G. Greeno, and Gaea Leinhardt, "Making the implicit explicit in the teaching of chemical equilibrium", 234th American Chemical Society National Meeting, Boston, MA. August, 2007.
David J. Yaron, Jodi Davenport, Jordi Cuadros, Michael Karabinos, James G. Greeno, and Gaea Leinhardt, "Making the Implicit Explicit in the Teaching of Chemical Equilibrium", Gordon Research Conference on Chemistry Education Research and Practice, Bates College, Lewiston, ME. June, 2007.
Jodi Davenport, David Yaron, Mike Karabinos, David Klahr and Ken Koedinger, "Chemical Equilibrium and the concept of Progress of Reaction", Poster presented at Gordon Research Conference on Chemistry Education Research and Practice, Bates College, Lewiston, ME. June, 2007.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport and Gaea Leinhardt, "On-line support for problem solving in introductory chemistry", 233rd American Chemical Society National Meeting, Chicago, IL. March, 2007.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport and Gaea Leinhardt, "Virtual labs and scenario-based activities for introductory chemistry", American Chemical Society - Penn-Ohio Regional Meeting, Theil College, Greenville, PA, October 2006.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport and Gaea Leinhardt, "Virtual lab activities for introductory chemistry labs", American Chemical Society Annual Meeting, San Francisco, September 2006.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport and Gaea Leinhardt, "Virtual labs activities for introductory chemistry", Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Perdue University, West Layefette In, July 2006.
David Yaron, Gaea Leinhardt, Michael Karabinos, Jordi Cuadros, and Karen Evans, "Virtual labs and scenario-based learning for introductory chemistry", Pacifichem, Hawaii, December 2005.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jodi Davenport, Jordi Cuadros, Emma Rehm, William McCue, David Dennis, Gaea Leinhardt and Karen Evans. "The ChemCollective Virtual Lab and Other Online Materials", Presented at Duke University, Durham, NC, November 2005.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jordi Cuadros, Emma Rehm, William McCue, David Dennis, Gaea Leinhardt and Karen Evans. "Using Virtual Lab Activities for Introductory Chemistry", Workshop presented at ChemEd 2005, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, July 2005.
David Yaron, Jordi Cuadros, Michael Karabinos, Emma Rehm, Tim Palucka, Gaea Leinhardt and Karen Evans. "Using Digital Libraries to Build Educational Communities: The Chemistry Collective", Paper presented at the 229th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, San Diego, CA, March 2005.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jordi Cuadros, Emma Rehm, Tim Palucka, Gaea Leinhardt and Karen Evans. "Using Virtual Lab Activities for Introductory Chemistry", Workshop presented at the 170th Two Year College Chemistry Conference at Palomar College, CA, March 2005.
David Yaron, Rea Freeland, D. Jeff Milton, Michael Karabinos, Donovan Lange, Jordi Cuadros, Emma Rehm, Tim Palucka Gaea Leinhardt, Karen Evans and Javier Corredor. "Using Digital Libraries to Build Educational Communities: The Chemistry Collective", Poster presented at the 2004 National Science Digital Libraries Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, November 2004.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jordi Cuadros, Emma Rehm, Tim Palucka, Gaea Leinhardt and Karen Evans. "Using Virtual Lab Activities for Introductory Chemistry", Workshop presented at the 12th Annual meeting of the Washington College Chemistry Teachers' Association, Leavenworth, WA, October 2004.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jordi Cuadros, Emma Rehm, Tim Palucka, Karen Evans and Gaea Leinhardt. "Using and Authoring Virtual Lab Activities for Introductory Chemistry", Workshop presented at the 18th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Ames, IA, July 2004.
BaoHui Zhang, Karen Evans, Gaea Leinhardt and David Yaron. "Using On-Line Experiments to Promote Conceptual Understanding and Reasoning about Chemistry: Comparison of Different Instructional Designs", Paper presented at the 18th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Ames, IA, July 2004.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Jordi Cuadros, Rea Freeland, Emma Rehm, Jeff Milton and Tim Palucka. "Virtual Labs and Scenario-Based Learning for Introductory Chemistry", Paper presented at the 18th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Ames, IA, July 2004.
Karen Evans, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt and David Yaron. "Chemistry in the Field and Chemistry in the Classroom: A Disconnect?", Paper presented at the 18th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Ames, IA, July 2004.
David Yaron, Gaea Leinhardt, Michael Karabinos, Emma Rehm, Rea Freeland, Jordi Cuadros, Karen Evans, BaoHui Zhang, D. Jeff Milton and Tim Palucka. "Using Digital Libraries to Build Educational Communities: The ChemCollective", Paper presented at the 18th Biennial Conference on Chemical Education, Ames, IA, July 2004.
David Yaron, Michael Karabinos, Gaea Leinhardt, Rea Freeland, Emma Rehm, Jordi Cuadros, Tim Palucka, D. Jeff Milton, Karen Evans and BaoHui Zhang. "Using Digital Libraries to Build Educational Communities: The ChemCollective", Demonstration presented at the 4th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries, Tuscon, AZ, June 2004.

Conference Exhibitions

BCCE 2014 - Grand Valley State University, Allendale Charter Township, MI - August 2014
ChemEd 2013 - University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada - July 2013
BCCE 2012 - Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA - July 2012
ChemEd 2011 - Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo MI - July 2011
BCCE 2010 - University of North Texas, Denton TX - July 2010
ChemEd 2009 - Radford, University, Radford, Va - August 2009
BCCE 2008 - Indiana University, Bloomington, In - July 2008
ChemEd 2007 - University of North Texas, Denton TX - July 2007
NSTA 2007 - St Louis, Mo - April 2007
BCCE 2006 - Perdue University, West Layefette In - July 2006
NSTA 2006 - Anaheim, Ca - April 2006
ChemEd 2005 - University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada - July 2005
NCSTA 2004 - Greensboro, NC - October 2004
BCCE 2004 - Iowa State University, Ames IA - July 2004
NSTA 2004 - Atlanta, Ga - April 2004
ACS Spring 2004 - Anaheim, Ca - March 2004
ChemEd 2003 - Auburn University - Auburn, Al - July 2003
AERA 2002 - New Orleans, LA - April 2002
BCCE 2002 - Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA - July 2002
ChemEd 2001 - York University Toronto, ON, Canada - July/August 2001