Chemistry By Design: A 4-Week In-Person and Virtual Activity to Teach Chemistry Through Human-Centered Design Invited Instructional Tool Brief

Abstract

Teaching chemistry through design has been advocated by chemistry education researchers as a pedagogy that can engage students in chemical thinking. This paper presents a 4-week activity to teach chemistry through Human-Centered Design (HCD) for high school students. The paper describes an in-person and online version of the activity including the collaborative learning tasks that a teacher implemented to engage students in human-centered design processes and chemical thinking. In this activity, students will work in groups on a design challenge that engages them in learning about and acquiring relevant chemistry knowledge so they can chemically think and make informed decisions about ideas that can transform into solutions to meet what they identify as people’s needs.