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This paper describes an Australian Learning and Teaching Council funded project for which Learning Design is encompassed in the broadest sense. ALIUS (Active Learning In University Science) takes the design of learning back to the learning experiences created for students. ALIUS is not about designing a particular activity, or subject, or course, but rather the development of a method, or process, by which we have re-designed the way in which learning occurs in large university classrooms world wide. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

The Science Threshold Learning Outcomes (TLOs) are a consensus set of academic standards for Australian university Science education. They were developed by Prof. Brian Yates and Prof. Sue Jones, supported by Dr Jo-Anne Kelder, during 2010-2011. The co-authors of this paper are key figures in Australian Science education, and in this manuscript, we have used a reflective semi-structured interview approach to describe the process of developing the Science TLOs and consider their subsequent effect on tertiary science education in Australia. This manuscript documents Sue and Brian's impact on science curriculum through the lenses of leadership, community and practice. We have a twofold aim: first to draw lessons for harnessing consensus in scientific communities on the value and purpose of a tertiary science education, and second to celebrate the success of these influential and impactful leaders in our community. We demonstrate how work to develop the TLOs has transformed tertiary science education in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student experience surveys have become increasingly popular to probe various aspects of processes and outcomes in higher education, such as measuring student perceptions of the learning environment and identifying aspects that could be improved. This paper reports on a particular survey for evaluating individual experiments that has been developed over some 15 years as part of a large national Australian study pertaining to the area of undergraduate laboratories--Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory. This paper reports on the development of the survey instrument and the evaluation of the survey using student responses to experiments from different institutions in Australia, New Zealand and the USA. A total of 3153 student responses have been analysed using factor analysis. Three factors, "motivation," "assessment" and "resources," have been identified as contributing to improved student attitudes to laboratory activities. A central focus of the survey is to provide feedback to practitioners to iteratively improve experiments. Implications for practitioners and researchers are also discussed.

An assessment of the acylation of ferrocene laboratory exercise across three successive years resulted in a significant fluctuation in student perception of the experiment. This perception was measured by collecting student responses to an instrument immediately after the experiment, which includes Likert and open-ended responses from the student. Students in all three years identified technical benefits from the experiment. In Years 1 and 3, students also recognised the benefits of improving their conceptual understanding of organic chemistry. However, in Year 2, where background knowledge became a critical and limiting factor, all perception of conceptual understanding as an experiment objective was lost, and only recognition of technical development remained. Analysis of these data also indicated that students who have enough time to complete the experiment also perceive a measure of responsibility for their own learning, whereas time-poor students have an over-reliance on the laboratory notes and demonstrators. Addressing concepts such as these may be the triggers required for time-poor experiments to garner a positive student experience and maximise both the conceptual and technical benefits of the experiment.

This paper describes an educational analysis of a first year university chemistry practical called "Investigating sugar using a home made polarimeter". The analysis follows the formalism of the Advancing Chemistry by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory (ACELL) project, which includes a statement of education objectives, and an analysis of the student learning experience. The practical requires students to accurately prepare solutions of known concentrations of a common consumer chemical (sucrose), and then investigate the interaction between these solutions and plane-polarised light. The instrument used is a "home built" polarimeter which students assemble, allowing them to recognise that scientific apparatus need not be mysterious in its operation or construction. Student feedback data were conducted using the ACELL Student Learning Experience (ASLE) instrument. Analysis of the data shows that overwhelmingly students rate the experiment as "worthwhile" or better. However, many also rate the experiment as "boring" or "uninteresting". By contrast, staff and student feedback at an ACELL experiential workshop rated the experiment very highly in terms of the "interest" criterion. In this contribution we discuss this alignment of staff and student perceptions of various elements, including "interest" and explore the correlation with the overall laboratory experience. (Contains 3 figures and 3 tables.)

A new density functional (BFW) is introduced which is explicitly designed to yield accurate, absolute ionization potentials for transition metal clusters. The numerical results for a selection of transition metal clusters and their carbides, nitrides and oxides are presented and at the same time it is found that BFW functional is significantly more accurate than B3LYP and B3PW91.

Experimental evidence is provided for the formation of neutral tantalum-carbide clusters in a supersonic expansion following the reaction of acetylene and tantalum in a laser ablation source.

Research has been conducted on a pendant donor macrocyclic ligand. The synthesis of this ligand from cyclen has been carried out.

The physicochemical foundation of electrokinetic charge separation in methanol was studied utilizing micron-sized channel diameters under both turbulent and laminar flow conditions. Turbulent flow research were performed using a 40 micron diameter stainless steel aperture which had a channel length of 0.5 mm. Electrokinetic streaming currents arose from a charge stripping process in the region close to the aperture channel wall. The moving liquid eliminated the relatively weakly held charges from the outer portion of the electrical double layer formed at the solid-liquid interface.

A study was conducted to carry out a potentiometric titration, molecular orbital and nuclear magnetic resonance study of Delta-1,4,7,10-tetrakis((R)-2-hydroxy-2-phenylethyl)-1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclod odecane and its eight alkali-metal complex ions. Results indicated that the tetraazacyclododecane and its complex ions exist as single square antiprismatic Delta diastereomers that support an exchange between diastereomeric forms in dimethylformamide.

The 1,4,7,10-tetrakis((S)-2-hydroxypropyl)-1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclododecane and its alkali metal complex ions take the form of distorted cubic lambdaS-thpc12 and lambda[M(S-thpc12)]+ diastereomers which go through an exchange between equivalent diastereomeric forms in solution. When a single nitrogen inversion takes place at all four nitrogens to yield deltaS-thpc12 and delta[M(S-thpc12)]+, the result is sterically undesirable, with the latter two diastereomers going undetected. Molecular orbital computations provide evidence to the aforementioned observation.

The experimental and theoretical adiabatic ionization energies (IEs) of the rhodium-holmium bimetallic clusters RhHo2On (n=0–2) have been determined using photoionization efficiency spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Both sets of data show the IE of RhHo2O to be significantly lower than the values for RhHo2 and RhHo2O2, which are found to be similar. This indicates that there are significant changes in electronic properties upon sequential addition of oxygen atoms to RhHo2. The DFT investigations show that the lowest energy neutral structures are a C2v triangle for RhHo2, a C2v planar structure for RhHo2O where the O atom is doubly bridged to the Ho–Ho bond, and a C2v nonplanar structure for RhHo2O2, where the O2 is dissociative and each O atom is doubly bridged to the Ho–Ho bond in the cluster above and below the RhHo2 trimer plane. Good correlation between the experimental and computational IE data imply that the lowest energy neutral structures calculated are the most likely isomers ionized in the molecular beam. In particular, the theoretical adiabatic IE for the dissociative RhHo2O2 structure is found to compare better with the experimentally determined value than the corresponding lowest energy O2 associative structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential energy surfaces of the van der Waals complexes benzene-Ar and p-difluorobenzene-Ar have been investigated at the second-order Møller-Plesset (MP2) level of theory with the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set. Calculations were performed with unconstrained geometry optimization for all stationary points. This study has been performed to elucidate the nature of a conflict between experimental results from dispersed fluorescence and velocity map imaging (VMI). The inconsistency is that spectra for levels of p-difluorobenzene-Ar and-Kr below the dissociation thresholds determined by VMI show bands where free p-difluorobenzene emits, suggesting that dissociation is occurring. We proposed that the bands observed in the dispersed fluorescence spectra are due to emission from states in which the rare gas atom orbits the aromatic chromophore; these states are populated by intramolecular vibrational redistribution from the initially excited level [S. M. Bellm, R. J. Moulds, and W. D. Lawrance, J. Chem. Phys. 115, 10709 (2001). To test this proposition, stationary points have been located on both the benzene-Ar and p-difluorobenzene-Ar potential energy surfaces (PESs) to determine the barriers to this orbiting motion. Comparison with previous single point CCSD (T) calculations of the benzene-Ar PES has been used to determine the amount by which the barriers are overestimated at the MP2 level. As there is little difference in the comparable regions of the benzene-Ar and p-difluorobenzene-Ar PESs, the overestimation is expected to be similar for p-difluorobenzene-Ar. Allowing for this overestimation gives the barrier to movement of the Ar atom around the pDFB ring via the valley between the H atoms as ⩽204 cm-1 in S0 (including zero point energy). From the estimated change upon electronic excitation, the corresponding barrier in S1 is estimated to be ⩽225 cm-1. This barrier is less than the 240 cm-1 energy of 302, the vibrational level for which the anomalous ''free p-difluorobenzene'' bands were observed in dispersed fluorescence from p-difluorobenzene-Ar, supporting our hypothesis for the origin of these bands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study is conducted using photoionization efficiency spectroscopy to determine ionization potentials (IP) of the niobium-carbide clusters, [Nb.sub.3][C.sub.n] (n=1-6). The [Nb.sub.3][C.sub.2] and [Nb.sub.4][C.sub.4] clusters exhibit the lowest IPs for the two series respectively.