The Duffy Group conducts chemistry education research (CER), a branch of discipline-based education research (DBER). DBER applies what we know about teaching and learning from from fields, such as the learning sciences, to the specific challenges within a particular discipline. For example, one challenge for learners of chemistry is the need to span multiple physical scales—relating the particulate level of atoms and molecules to large scale macroscopic phenomena—as well as understand the symbolic language used to represent chemical phenomena.
Broadly, our research interests lie in teaching and learning of physical chemistry and measuring student learning of chemistry of laboratory courses.
