In the Classroom edited by
NSF Highlights
Susan H. Hixson
Projects Supported by the NSF Division of Undergraduate Education
Molecular Science: Network-Deliverable Curricula
National Science Foundation Arlington, VA 2230
Curtis T. Sears, Jr. Georgia State University Atlanta, GA 30303
Arlene A. Russell and Orville L. Chapman Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California–Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 Patrick A. Wegner Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, California State University, Fullerton, CA 92634
The Molecular Science systemic reform project, which has just begun its third year, is developing network-deliverable curricula for the first two years of Chemistry.1 The goals of the project are to prepare students who have a deep understanding of chemistry concepts and principles, have learned collaboration skills, can use the modern-technology tools of the chemist, and can write about chemistry. In addition, the project is integrating technology and telecommunications into the instructional process and shifting the instruction from lecture to active student learning. Faculty from six institutions (Crossroads School, East Los Angeles College, Pasadena City College, Mt. San Antonio College, California State University, Fullerton [CSUF], and the University of California, Los Angeles [UCLA]) form the core of the project. This crosssection represents the common and shared responsibility that exists for teaching the first two years of chemistry and the diversity of students in the nation. Consortium faculty are primarily responsible for development and testing of the new curricular materials and processes, although other institutions that have joined us during the project are also developing and field-testing materials. Our strategy is based on active learning and consists of four levels of curricular development. At the bottom—and everything rests on this—is the creation of a large number of databases that allow students to explore, examine, and study fundamental chemical observations and data. Students encounter these data sets through exploration assignments, which are structured tasks and tutorials that lead to generalizations and classifications and then theories. This process yields a physical and practical understanding of the theoretical and conceptual foundation of molecular science. After the explorations students use the data in new ways in constructions, which are sets of problem-oriented tasks that force students to propose and test models and to think critically about the theory. Applications, the highest-level tasks, address real-world problems, bridge databases, require students to transfer information across areas, and require “system thinking”. Working through the problems requires that students use nuanced judgment and apply multiple criteria. They must impose meaning on the information and evaluate the relevance and significance of the data. Five themes encompass the core concepts for the databases: molecular structure, mechanism and reactivity, reactions and synthesis, theory and concepts, and ethics and policy. Within each theme, there are constructions and applications focused towards the biological sciences, material science, environmental science as well as “pure chemistry.” 578
Assessment drives the instructional design. Evaluation guidelines and assessment criteria for the knowledge, skills, and abilities that students are expected to acquire in each activity are prepared first. These inform the development of the explorations, constructions, and applications. In effect, these guidelines become performance standards or benchmarks. They guide the revision of activities during development and field testing and serve as benchmarks for both students and instructors to measure mastery during use. Robert Kozma and Edys Quellmalz, our evaluation consultants from the Center for the Study of Technology and Learning at SRI International, have developed templates for the project assessment processes. The templates can serve any instructor who prefers mastery learning to grading on a curve. Formative evaluation field-test data are collected through observation of student use, student performance data, and focus-group interviews. These data are fed back into the design process as revisions are made. The second field test occurs with an instructor who has not been part of the development. Faculty from institutions outside the consortium, such as City College of San Francisco, Pepperdine University, Fullerton City College, Albuquerque TVI, and Virginia Commonwealth University, are assisting us in this step. As the databases, explorations, constructions, and applications are developed we are putting them onto the Web and delivering them through WebCT, 2 the course management tool program we have selected. Students in the field tests do not care that the programs are being run from servers at UCLA and CSUF. Writing about chemistry is a primary goal of the Molecular Science project. Scientists must write, and so must our students. Although few would argue that writing about chemistry clarifies and demonstrates understanding, writing is seldom required in introductory chemistry classes. The workload of grading writing assignments simply exceeds the time available to instructors, even if teaching assistants are available. Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) puts writing back into the curriculum without increasing the teaching workload. In CPR, students write 200-word abstracts on an article that pertains to the topic they are studying. After submitting it into the Web-based CPR template, they receive three “calibration” paragraphs on the same article. When they have assessed these correctly, by answering questions about the content, clarity, grammar, and style, they are considered “calibrated” and they randomly receive three anonymous abstracts written by their classmates. They evaluate these writing samples using the same criteria as the calibration
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 5 May 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
In the Classroom
paragraphs and then finally self-assess their own paragraph. Upon completion of the assignment, they receive the evaluations and comments that their peers have given them, not unlike the NSF proposal review process. Students worry more about their peers’ reviews of their work than they do the instructor’s. The Molecular Science Project has begun to prepare a database of about 100 articles along with their calibration abstracts and evaluation questions. The articles cover the different focus areas of Molecular Science and deal with the core concepts, applications, and ethics. Calibration essays are also being developed and integrated into the core unit activities to extend this process to all the writing tasks of the Molecular Science Project. Class size no longer limits writing assignments. By the end of 1997 the project had prepared and begun testing 20 activities in addition to CPR (see Table 1). The nature of the courses that the consortium faculty were teaching dictated a concentration on structure. However, as the project proceeds, the breadth of the topics will expand. Because of the differing nature of classes and facilities in our consortium schools, we are developing and testing materials in two parallel and complementary processes: •
•
A synchronous studio-classroom use, where the class and the instructor work together exploring the materials in a scheduled class period and extensive collaboration occurs among the students on the constructions and applications in the classroom. An asynchronous, self-paced assignment/tutorial use where students work individually or in small groups outside of class time or in small discussion sections with a teaching assistant. Collaboration occurs through shared assignments, chat rooms, virtual office hours, and bulletin boards.
At the end of the second year of the project we have preliminary evaluation data from the fall 1997 term at CSUF and UCLA. We have found that students attend to the Molecular Science tasks with a new eagerness. At CSUF, students requested extra time in the studio classroom even though Friday was the only day available. At UCLA, class attendance doubled when the freshman lecture was replaced with an interactive kinetics assignment. Performance has also changed. At CSUF last fall, students in the studio-class format had averages significantly and substantially higher on the first two midterms than did students taught previously by the same instructor in a traditional lecture-based class. Many of the studio-class format students opted out of the final, because they had demonstrated mastery of the material during the term and had the grade they wanted. At UCLA, freshman students were given an online final in which they had to use the Internet, a spreadsheet, molecular modeling tools, and spectroscopy simulation tools. Two students who had been identified by the Office of Students with Disabilities as requiring more time for exams finished their exams before many of their peers. One of these students stood first in the class! An explicit goal of the Molecular Science materials and process is to generate students who are independent learners. Our experience is that Molecular Science activities require more time of students than traditional methods. Higher-level thinking tasks, such as designing a molecule with a specific shape, summarizing an article, or interpreting and analyzing data, cannot be dashed off at the last minute. They take time,
Table 1. Units Developed and Tested (1/98) Level
Topic
Tools (if not Web)
Exploration
Structural representations
PC disk
Molecular geometry I
WebLab viewer
Structure
Construction
Application
Molecular geometry II
Rasmol and Chime
Amino acids and peptides
Rasmol and Chime
Formulas & composition
Excel
Crystalline solids
Web or PC disk
Molecular geometry III
PC Spartan+
NMR
CNMR Lite
Molecular design
PC Spartan+
Symmetry NMR
Mechanism and Reactivity Exploration
Kinetics
Excel
Equilibrium
Excel
Thermochemistry Construction
Kinetics
Exploration
Balancing equations
Excel
Reactions and Synthesis
Construction
Excel
Photochemistry Balancing equations
Application
Photochemistry
Exploration
Atomic structure
Theor y and Concepts Excel
which students see as a productive learning experience. On the other hand, an implicit goal of the project is to provide activities that an instructor can adopt without adding substantially to his or her workload. The Molecular Science activities can be adopted individually or collectively and can be used as is. The activities on the Web are self-contained, and the templates provide built-in assessment protocols. Adapting, of course, implies a larger commitment. At the 15th BCCE in Waterloo, Ontario, this summer, the Molecular Science Project will present a symposium to demonstrate many of the activities. We will follow the presentations with a panel to address questions that the audience may have about using the materials in their classes. Acknowledgment This work is partially supported by the National Sciences Foundation, Division of Undergraduate Education, Course and Curriculum Development Program, grant no. DUE 9555605. Notes 1. http://server2.nslc.ucla.edu/molsci/index.htm 2. http://homebrew1.cs.ubc.ca/webct/
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