This project is studying relationships between classroom instruction and engagement in critical thinking processes to further understanding of how to enhance students' abilities to apply general chemistry ideas effectively in new contexts. A central issue being examined is how transfer of learning can be promoted in traditional lecture-based general chemistry settings by integrating carefully crafted classroom activities and homework assignments into the courses. The project has four main goals: 1) to develop and implement such activities and assignments for general chemistry in alignment with research on transfer of learning, 2) to study how the implementation of each of the activities and assignments influences how students engage in key thinking processes, 3) to study relationships between key thinking processes and students' application of general chemistry understanding to new contexts, and 4) to explore how students' beliefs about learning, motivation, and preferred learning strategies impact their engagement in key thinking processes. The project team is adapting the Designs for Knowledge Evolution (DKE) instructional method (developed by Daniel Schwartz's research group) and the Model-Observe-Reflect-Explain (MORE) Thinking Frame instructional method to develop at least twenty DKE-based "notice and reconcile" activities to be integrated with lectures, eight MORE-based homework assignments that integrate in-class activities and demonstrations with students' development of initial and refined models through reconciliation with evidence, five "reflect on your learning processes/strategies" assignments, and "clicker" questions designed to augment and assess learning. The project team is collecting and analyzing data using existing instruments measuring students' attitudes about science, strategies for learning, and conceptual understanding in general chemistry, as well as field observations and video of the implementation of classroom activities, students' written coursework and responses to regular course exams. Analysis of video of student interviews will measure retention of learning through isomorphic questions and transfer of learning through questions that require students to apply their understandings in new contexts. Resources developed by this project will be shared through peer-reviewed publications and through a workshop on how to use the activities and assessments at the 2012 Biennial Conference on Chemical Education. Participants in the workshop will be invited to test the materials, and the project team will provide the materials and support effective implementation.
This project developed a series of activities for a year-long general chemistry course using a research-based instructional method that we refer to as Guided Discovery-Direct Instruction (GDDI). During GDDI, students first participate in an activity in which they compare and contrast different cases relating to a conceptual theme, in order to develop general rules and/or procedures to explain the concept. Only after the students participate in the guided discovery activities are they presented with the "scientifically-accepted" model of the system in lecture. One of the values of this approach is that student learning during lecture may be enhanced by preparing the students for learning. Twenty-six activities (15 first-semester activities and 11 second-semester activities) were developed and implemented at a variety of different institutions (including a large 4-year research university and a community college). The activities are organized by the overarching themes: Interaction of Charged Particles, Stoichiometry and Quantitative Relationships, Kinetics, and Equilibrium and Thermodynamics. Each activity includes instructor guidelines for implementation and grading, as well as a set of individual response (or clicker) questions, which allow the instructor to gauge students’ conceptual understanding before and after the activities. We also developed a series of interview questions to analyze students’ abilities to transfer their knowledge about the key concepts to new contexts. By analyzing student work on a number of measures including written work on activity worksheets, answers to clicker questions, video analysis of students working during the activities, end-of-semester interviews, and student responses to exam questions, we determined that the developed guided-discovery activities were effective for learning by several measures: Students engage in high-level thinking processes. This can be seen in video of student groups and in the group worksheets. In particular, there is evidence that students compare and contrast the cases presented on the worksheets as they develop their general rules/procedures for the given activities. Students progress towards scientifically-correct models during GDDI process. This progression was tracked through pre- and post clicker questions, as well as exam questions, and was investigated specifically for the atomic and ionic radii, thermodynamics, and electrochemistry activities for a variety of instructional contexts. Implementation of our guided-discovery activities has the potential to reveal areas of student difficulty that may not be apparent with other activities. This affords the instructor the opportunity to address those difficulties. Engagement in compare/contrast correlates with transfer success, as investigated for the electrostatic potential energy activity in group video analysis and corresponding exam questions. Student groups’ engagement in comparing and contrasting cases is positively associated with success at applying ideas in a new (near transfer) context. Thus, comparing and contrasting cases to extract the deep structure may be a key thinking process that contributes to transfer success. A majority of students see value of engaging in GD activities that precede lecture in a range of instructional contexts (recitation or lecture implementation; faculty-led or TA- led, both experienced and inexperienced). There were differences in student perceived effectiveness of the activities in different instructional contexts that warrant further exploration to determine how to maximize the success of these activities. We were also interested in characterizing how students’ beliefs about learning, motivation, and preferred learning strategies relate to their propensity to engage in key thinking processes, and to that end, we analyzed general chemistry students’ exam score postdictions (postdictions are performance estimates upon completion of an exam, measured by response to the question "What percentage score do you expect to earn on this exam?). It was hypothesized that a student’s ability to accurately judge his or her performance is related to his or her ability to monitor learning. A summary of the results of the investigations of student postdictions of exam score includes the following points: A large proportion of students in both semesters of general chemistry are miscalibrated when it comes to exam score postdiction, with the majority overpostdicting their exam scores. Higher performing students are significantly better calibrated than lower performing students. Evidence suggests that in some cases, students may be modifying their postdictions over the course of the semester.
