Chemistry (12) The goal of this project is to bring together two complementary research-based pedagogical advances, Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) and Process-Oriented Guided-Inquiry Learning (POGIL), in order to create focused active-learning activities that guide students in discovering the explicit connections between the concepts in general chemistry and real-world contexts. The project is a collaborative effort among faculty from Coastal Carolina University, Northeastern University, and SUNY Stony Brook. The project incorporates all five stages of NSF's cyclic model for project development: conducting research, creating materials, developing expertise, implementing innovations, and assessing learning / evaluating innovations. It builds on research in the cognitive sciences on how people learn and the documented success of previous innovations that improved learning. It is creating novel curriculum materials, developing expertise both in producing and implementing them in the classroom, assessing their impact on learning, and evaluating their quality from the perspectives of both instructors and students. Intellectual Merit Research in the cognitive sciences has documented that people learn by constructing their own understanding based on prior knowledge and experiences; following a learning cycle of exploration, concept formation, and application; discussing and interacting with others; employing metacognition; and visualizing and interconnecting concepts and procedures in multiple representations. Employing these principles, the two successful models, PLTL and POGIL, have been developed for general chemistry with NSF support and have been found to better engage students in learning. Simultaneously the benefits of contextually-rich general chemistry instruction have been recognized, resulting in the publication of textbooks with this theme. Real-world contexts help students grow their understanding of new material from their current knowledge and experiences and provide motivation for learning by making the relevance and significance of the material obvious. The POGIL materials, which develop learning process skills and content mastery by employing guided inquiry and the learning cycle, generally do not make strong connections to real world contexts, while the contextually-rich textbooks do not use guided inquiry and the learning cycle. This project seeks to bring the benefits of the POGIL and PLTL models to the use of contextually-rich materials. Succinct stand-alone modules are being developed that introduce real-world questions, help students recognize the necessity for chemical models and identify those models, provide links to POGIL activities for the relevant chemistry content, and lead students toward interaction, self-assessment, and reflection about their learning. The new modules draw on students' prior experiences within and beyond science coursework, provide opportunities for further exploration and research, and some highlight contemporary frontiers in technology and research. Broader Impacts This project is producing a new tested body of novel active-learning curricular materials that are expected to affect instruction in general chemistry and possibly other STEM disciplines. They are being tested in a variety of institutional contexts. Dissemination is occurring through publication of the developed materials and through use of the existing POGIL network to reach and train faculty.
