Gateway to Success for At-Risk Students in a Large-Group Introductory Chemistry Class

Mason, Diana S.; Verdel, Ellen

doi:10.1021/ed078p252

Cited by 16 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The classroom layout can have an impact on the implementation of research-based instructional practices. For example, classrooms with stadium-style seating make it difficult to keep track of what students are doing. ,, Brooks completed a study that examined the influence of classroom layout on student success in an introductory biology course. This study used the same instructor, curriculum, time of day the class was offered, and exams for a course offered in a traditional stadium-style classroom and a reformed active learning classroom with round tables designed to promote group work.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Let Students Work: Analysis of the Role of Differing Facilitation on Student Engagement in a Large Stadium-Style Lecture Hall

States,

Lovig,

Martin

et al. 2023

J. Chem. Educ.

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The classroom environment is shaped by factors such as facilitation style, curricular design, and classroom layout. These factors are all inputs into student framing of the classroom environment and affect a student's comfort interacting within it. Promoting student discourse in active learning environments provides students the opportunity to explain their thinking and develop their understanding of natural phenomena. However, successfully implementing these practices in large lecture environments is often difficult. Undergraduate introductory chemistry lectures were investigated to identify the effects that instructional practices had on student engagement. Instructor facilitation, question level, and student interactions were analyzed and compared to provide insights into what instructional practices may promote or hinder student engagement in a large enrollment course. Overall instructors were positioning themselves as an authority on knowledge in the classroom by leading questions authoritatively like instructor-focused didactic lecturing that led to a decrease in student engagement. These results highlight the complexity of the classroom ecosystem related to student interactions and the role that facilitation plays in social and cognitive engagement.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Let Students Work: Analysis of the Role of Differing Facilitation on Student Engagement in a Large Stadium-Style Lecture Hall

States,

Lovig,

Martin

et al. 2023

J. Chem. Educ.

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show abstract

“…We observed no substantive relationship between students' ACT/SAT math scores and their written explanations, despite consistent research supporting the relationship between access to math preparation and students' success in chemistry (Mason & Verdel, 2001;McFate & Olmsted, 1999;Ozsogomonyan & Loftus, 1979;Pedersen, 1975;Powell et al, 2020;Schelar et al, 1963;Williamson et al, 2020). Equitable engagement in our 3D dissolution task suggests that assessing 3D performances in learning environments that coherently emphasize such performances may be more equitable for students with inequitable access to precollege mathematics preparation.…”

Section: Explaining Phenomena May Support More Equitable Achievementmentioning

confidence: 54%

Beyond instructional practices: Characterizing learning environments that support students in explaining chemical phenomena

et al. 2022

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Many conversations surrounding improvement of large‐enrollment college science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) courses focus primarily (or solely) on changing instructional practices. By reducing dynamic, complex learning environments to collections of teaching methods, we neglect other meaningful parts of a course ecosystem (e.g., curriculum, assessments). Here, we advocate extending STEM education reform conversations beyond “active versus passive learning.” We argue communities of researchers and instructors would be better served if what we teach and assess was discussed alongside how we teach. To enable nuanced conversations about the characteristics of learning environments that support students in explaining phenomena, we defined a model of college STEM learning environments which attends to the intellectual work emphasized and rewarded on exams (i.e., assessment emphasis), what is taught in whole‐class meetings (i.e., instructional emphasis), and how those meetings are enacted (i.e., instructional practices). We subsequently characterized three distinct chemistry courses and qualitatively examined the characteristics of chemistry learning environments that effectively supported students in explaining why a beaker of water warms as a white solid dissolves. Furthermore, we quantitatively investigated the extent to which measures of incoming preparation explained variance in students’ explanations relative to enrollment in each learning environment. Our findings demonstrate that learning environments that effectively supported learners in explaining dissolution emphasized how and why salts dissolve in‐class and on assessments. Changing teaching methods in an otherwise traditionally structured course (i.e., a course organized by topics that primarily assesses math and recall) did not appear to impact the sophistication of students’ explanations. Additionally, we observed that learning environment enrollment explained substantially more of the variance observed in students’ explanations than measures of precollege math preparation. This finding suggests that emphasizing and rewarding the construction of causal accounts for phenomena in‐class and on assessments may support more equitable achievement.

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“…Research on effect of class size points out the predominant issues of student-to-instructor ratio, opportunities for attention, and active involvement in smaller versus larger classes (29,30), as well as size of working groups (31). In this study the student-to-instructor ratio is obviously different, although the ratio of student-to-TA is actually better for the conventional class (22:1) than for the cAcL 2 class (50:1).…”

Section: Recommendations For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 67%

Effects of an Active Learning Environment: Teaching Innovations at a Research I Institution

Oliver-Hoyo¹,

Allen²,

Hunt³

et al. 2004

J. Chem. Educ.

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This paper describes a new approach for teaching general chemistry that combines lecture and laboratory into one seamless session and incorporates instructional methods supported by research-based findings. The results of a study that compared two instructional formats, conventional passive lecture and the student-centered, highly collaborative format known as cAcL2 (concept Advancement through chemistry Lab–Lecture), are also presented. Factors carefully controlled in this study include content material, time of day, time on task, and test format, scheduling, and grading. The results of the analysis of variance and the evaluation of the means conclude that the cAcL2 instructional method had a positive effect on student performance in an introductory chemistry class.

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Gateway to Success for At-Risk Students in a Large-Group Introductory Chemistry Class

Cited by 16 publications

References 24 publications

Let Students Work: Analysis of the Role of Differing Facilitation on Student Engagement in a Large Stadium-Style Lecture Hall

Let Students Work: Analysis of the Role of Differing Facilitation on Student Engagement in a Large Stadium-Style Lecture Hall

Beyond instructional practices: Characterizing learning environments that support students in explaining chemical phenomena

Effects of an Active Learning Environment: Teaching Innovations at a Research I Institution

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