Yezierski Research Group

YRG Latest News

6/23/2026: Take a listen to the new episode on the Scholarly Chemistry Teaching Community Conversation at the BCCE in July! The popular Chemistry for Your Life podcast hosted by Melissa Collini and Jam Robinson has done a great series on the BCCE. The latest episode features Melissa and Ellen discussing goodies about the upcoming panel featuring Addie Smith, Barbara Reisner, and Jack Eichler. Learn about improving chemistry teaching and fire up for BCCE!

6/13/2026: Thank you to Rick Moog and the POGIL Project for the honor of serving as the plenary speaker at the 2026 POGIL National Meeting. Connecting with old friends, learning from new ones, and working with one of POGIL's strategic teams was a blast. And of course I always learn from this group of inquiry-focused authors, professional developers, and practitioners.

4/24/2026: The YRG Rocks the 2026 Miami Undergraduate Research Forum! Check out both posters from Friday afternoon: Shea Vaquera & Gabby Peoples - Redox on YouTube: Representations, Content Features, and Chemistry Learning Potential; Arden Fry - Evaluating Redox YouTube Videos Through Representation and Multimedia Theory. View photos of the authors in action at the wonderful event. Way to G!F!W!

4/24/206: Congratulations to Miciah Mikes-Thacker! She just accepted a science teacher position at Lakota West High School. The YRG is proud and looks forward to seeing all you do for teaching, learning, and leadership at your school.

4/22/2026: Congratulations to Melinda Barman! She just accepted a physical science teacher position at North Pole High School in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District. The YRG is proud and knows how valuable you'll be to your kids and community.

3/30/2026: YRG PAPER PUBLISHED! This article has SIX undergraduate co-authors, including our first author.

Barman, M. E., Mikes-Thacker, M. L., Moorehead, M. E., Wissman, M., Gerken, W., Ryland, S. M., & Yezierski, E. J. (2026). Examining generative, extraneous, and essential features in chemistry YouTube videos: Recommendations for practice, Journal of Chemical Education, ASAP. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.5c01225. CONGRATULATIONS to a wonderful author team!

3/24/2026: The 2026 National Awards Banquet and Ceremony was one of the most exciting nights of my career! Joined by my family and nominators Stacey Lowery Bretz, Alice Putti, Norb Pienta, and other symposium contributors Debbie Herrington, Roy Tasker, Matt Wu, and Jordan Harshman, I accepted my award on stage at what felt like to me the Academy Awards. Thank you to the ACS Exams Institute for endowing the award in perpetuity. Special thanks go to Kristen Murphy (Director, ACS Exams Insitute), Matt Mio (Chair, BoT), and Rigoberto Hernandez (ACS President) for presenting me with the award in front of the Society.

YRG News Archive

Research in the Yezierski Group aims to improve conceptual understanding of chemistry with a focus on the dynamics of teaching chemistry and teacher change. The goal of our work is characterizing and reforming instruction across a variety of grade levels (middle school, high school, and college) and learning environments (formal and informal). Projects have employed a variety of designs and methods that explore innovations in particulate-centered curricula, scientific reasoning, chemistry self-concept, learning in chemistry outreach, formative assessment, characterizing animation use and instructional materials, and teacher change. Current projects focus on instructional change and its outcomes using the VisChem Approach (storyboarding chemical phenomena supported with dynamic molecular-level animations) and the evaluation of YouTube chemistry videos using Mayer's Multimedia Principles.

If you're interested in learning more about our group's work, please browse our People and Publications pages. Please contact Dr. Yezierski to discuss what you could do and learn as an undergraduate member of the Yezierski Research Group. I am not currently accepting graduate students to the group.