Regis Komperda, Ph.D.

Email

Primary Email: [email protected]

Phone/Fax

Primary Phone: 42422

Building/Location

Geology Mathematics Computer Science - 203
5500 Campanile Dr
San Diego, CA 92182

Bio

Chemistry education research (CER) investigates how students learn chemistry and works to develop evidence-based teaching practices. CER is grounded in knowledge of chemistry content and skills and integrates theoretical frameworks and research methodologies from fields including psychology and education. The field of CER is a specific area within the broader discipline-based education research (DBER) community and working in CER offers many opportunities for collaboration with other DBER community members. At SDSU this work is supported by the Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education (CRMSE), where I am a member. My research is primarily quantitative and has two main areas of emphasis. The first focus is investigating issues of measurement and psychometric instrumentation in chemistry education. Having tools available to make high quality measurements is crucial to generating valid and reliable data. These data support chemistry and other discipline-based education researchers when measuring variables in various classroom and research contexts. Current projects include psychometric evaluation of instruments measuring student motivation, student study approaches, instructor teaching approaches, and learning environment characteristics. These instruments support my second focus on building larger statistical models using latent variable techniques, such as structural equation modeling, to better understand how the adoption of evidence-based teaching practices influences student outcomes in chemistry courses. A common theme throughout all areas of my research is use of the open-source R statistical software to encourage reproducible research through code sharing.

Areas of Specialization

Chemical Education