Faculty Assessment Of The Effects Of A Freshman Chemistry Course

Abstract

A unique assessment of the effects of a freshman chemistry course was conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during spring, 1995. Twenty-five faculty from eleven departments outside the Chemistry Department participated as assessors, interviewing some 200 students from an experimental and a comparison version of the course. Results show notable differences. Moreover, the experience of participating in the assessment has generated significant interest in new approaches to teaching among the twenty-five faculty participants.. . Background: Development of Structured Active Learning Strategies Chemistry 110 is the second course in a two-semester sequence designed for "fast-track" firstsemester students, most of whom are science and engineering majors. One of the sections of Chemistry 110 has been taught for many years by John Wright, the Chemistry Department faculty member who initiated the Chemistry 110 assessment project reported here. After devoting serious effort to teaching the course for some 20 years, Wright realized that, while most students acquired enough command of the material to perform well on exams, they rarely made the connections between lecture material and lab applications. Drawing on input from Chem 110 students and a senior colleague, he decided in 1992 to try to create a learning environment that would allow students to understand the connections among concepts and between theory and applications. His overarching strategy for achieving this goal was to give the students more responsibility for their learning while at the same time providing the necessary tools and support for solving more difficult research problems. Each year since 1992, he introduced and used informal classroom assessment techniques until he had a set of "structured active learning" (SAL) strategies that he believed achieve his newly articulated goals.' These SAL strategies include: q an absolute grading scale that replaced the "curve"; q student lab groups that completed three open-ended laboratory projects (during the first 6 weeks-. of the semester, students completed standard lab experiments individually); q student lab groups that read and analyzed research papers; q interactive techniques in the lecture, including think-pair-share, collaborative problem solving, concept tests, and list generation exercises;