Innovative Education and Active Teaching with the Leidenfrost Nanochemistry

The best learning outcomes are rarely achieved without motivating the learner, and in this regard, active teaching and learning methods have been proven useful. Here, we introduce the “learn and innovate” strategy to enhance the students’ interest, conceptual understanding, and deep learning under full guiding instructions. Moreover, by this strategy, we encourage the students to conduct an independent research while acquiring high-level thinking skills. Designing appropriate instructional strategies and innovative research tasks and media, which leads to collaborative/cooperative learning, enhances the students’ interaction with the course materials. The method supports the students to gain self-confidence, motivation, and scientific skills to address different research challenges at early stages while enhancing their learning level. In this context, the adopted strategy fosters a first semester master student to deeply understand the new “Leidenfrost Nanochemistry” phenomenon to synthesize Au nanoparticles. Acquiring such knowledge, the student can participate in solving an exploratory research problem and the related experimental challenges. The “learn and innovate” approach has been proven to be a pivotal and novel active teaching strategy to stimulate the active learning of students and the innovative education-based Aha! effect.