In the Classroom
Teaching Is Learning—Maximum Incentive, Minimum Discipline in Student Groups Teaching General Chemistry Mark Benvenuto Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit, MI 48219-0900;
[email protected] The idea of using students or groups of students to lead a discussion is nothing new in chemistry classes or other academic fields (1–5). A sustained effort to actively engage students in lecture classes has been going on in the sciences for at least a decade (6–11), with pros and cons about such teaching being voiced by both faculty and students (12–14). I wish to report on a student group teaching technique that has been used successfully in the general chemistry lecture at the 100-level. This technique has received high marks in student course reviews and should enhance student learning at any level. Overview A semester-long General Chemistry class (of approximately 70 students) aimed at science, premedical, and engineering students was the setting for a small group teaching technique. The class was divided into twelve groups by the teacher. All individuals were informed that their groups should get to know each other well, study together both in class and out, and be prepared to help each other. The reason for this was that they would be teaching together for one week of the semester (three lecture periods), and they would be tested together. Specifically, each person’s weekly quiz would be compared to the quizzes of others in the group. If all group members received at least 70% on a quiz, they would automatically have their grade increased to 78%, and grades of group members who scored higher would not decrease. If all group scores were at least 80%, the group would be increased to a minimum of 88%, again with higher grades remaining untouched. And if all group members earned a 90%, the quiz grade would be increased to 100% for each member. Additionally, for the week that a group taught, 10% would be added to each group member’s quiz grade no matter what it was, if all the other groups received at least 70% on that quiz. As one can see, the idea was not just to get the students thinking more about their chemistry studies, but to create a positive atmosphere wherein each student had the possibility of reward for good performance. In trying to minimize negative reinforcement, only one restrictive rule was put into effect: a student who simply was not contributing to the group could be “removed” from it by the teacher for the purposes of testing. This meant that if a student’s weekly quiz grades routinely brought down the group to a point below the bonus zones, that quiz grade would not be figured into the computation for bonuses for the group. It also meant the student would lose the chance for these bonuses. The entire idea behind such a teaching technique is the belief that people respond better when they perceive a possible reward for their actions rather than a punishment. This idea is thus dubbed maximum incentive, minimum discipline.
194
Student and Teacher Preparation It was unfair as well as unrealistic to throw student groups together with nothing more than the textbook from which to prepare their lectures. After all, teachers and faculty routinely utilize teacher’s manuals, overhead slides, and other ancillaries for class lecture presentations. To help the groups, a weekly meeting was set up with each student group two days before the first lecture they would present. They were provided with several copies of the instructor’s manual for the text, and the ancillary overheads and videotapes for the course. At these meetings, each group was informed that if they wished to hand out information to their classmates, they could give the teacher the material to be copied up to one hour before the class and the necessary photocopies would be made. They were also told to submit requests for an overhead projector or television and VCR recorder at least one hour before their needed time. It was stressed that there was no penalty for turning to the faculty member during a lecture and asking to have a concept explained again or to have help solving a problem. This safety net was important for two reasons. First, it decreased many students’ fears that they might look foolish or uninformed in front of their peers. Second, most teachers (at any level) will agree that an idea often needs to be explained to a learner more than once and perhaps in more than one way. The preparation meetings with each group were definitely a self-imposed increase in the teacher’s weekly workload. However, they quickly became a weekly highlight, because of the students’ attitudes, actions, and plans. Students often came to the meeting excited and ready to discuss new ideas about how to teach their subject matter. They routinely and without outside help decided to break up their material into subsections for each individual within their group to teach. They felt that this made for a workable amount of material that each person would prepare. At a number of meetings it was plain to see that the student energy level for their coming week of teaching was quite high. They bounced ideas off each other about how to present information and how to make their own pedagogical aids, such as posters or placards. One question that arose at a number of group preparation meetings was, “when would the faculty member step in if a student was presenting grossly incorrect information?” The answer was that all group members were expected to listen to their colleague who was teaching and help him or her if they thought this was occurring, but the teacher would routinely ask questions in the lecture or question information that was presented incorrectly. To the students’ credit, there was not even one instance in which the teacher had to take back a portion of a lecture from a student because he or she was presenting incorrect ideas, although there were a handful of
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 78 No. 2 February 2001 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
In the Classroom
cases in which an unprepared student was removed from the teaching session. (It should be mentioned that this class comprised a range of students from high achievers to the majority of students, who had had a number of remedial classes at the University—53 of the 71 had taken the preparatory general chemistry class before this one). Another frequently asked question in the preparation meetings dealt with how a fair quiz would be made and presented if the student teachers were not allowed to see it beforehand. The situation was handled by having the student group suggest problems to the class at the end of each lecture. These could be problems from the end-of-chapter sections of the text, or could be ones that student groups came up with themselves. These problems would then be used as a starting point for producing quizzes. This ensured that students had a base from which to study but also allowed considerable room to construct tests and quizzes that were not just regurgitated practice questions.
teaching—and completed it. In these cases, the teacher gave out suggested problems for out-of-class work and reiterated office hours to the students, with a comment that if they wished to discuss the subject matter further they could do so during office hours or by appointment. Another problem that can be expected with any innovative endeavor in a university classroom is that students will simply opt not to attend the class. While attendance was not tied to any number of points for the class, it appears that very little truancy occurred throughout the semester. The size of the student body in the lecture was not noticeably larger during the Friday quizzes than during either the Monday or Wednesday lectures. In no case did a student fail to appear on the day he or she was to teach the lecture. In more than one instance the professor overheard students exhorting their classmates to attend a particular lecture they would be teaching because they had plans for making it fun or interesting. Making the Hard Call
Execution Small group teaching commenced in the second week of the semester. The first and final weeks were taught by the teacher, leaving 12 weeks in which the student groups would be responsible for the lecture material. With the exception of weeks in which a holiday canceled a class, each group was responsible for two 50-minute lectures and one 15-minute lecture (the weekly quiz filling in the remainder of that class period). The results were not always perfect, but the highs were higher than expected and the lows less severe. As in any new experiment in the classroom, there were some pleasant surprises. A number of groups chose to make their own handouts. Many listed vocabulary and key terms, some showed detailed workings of difficult problems, and others gave mnemonics for difficult concepts. A number of groups used an overhead projector, with either slides they had made or those provided as a text ancillary. Two groups utilized videotapes to help illustrate the ideas of their lectures (15). One group staged a rally to learn the Ideal Gas Law. They had the class split into two halves and chant “PV”, then “equals nRT !” before solving a number of gas law problems. A group that was in charge of balancing chemical equations chose to write only problems on the board, but explain the rules of balancing as each step was presented. This particular group got a laugh from the entire class when one student learner queried if the balancing rules would be written down, and the presenter responded, “No. It’s already in your book and I’m going to say it three times. Then we’re going to just keep solving problems.” To his credit, they did solve problems until the entire class (including the student who asked about the rules) was satisfied. Of course, whenever there are highs there will be lows. The routine low was a student who was teaching and had done only minimal preparation for his or her lecture. This occurred on five occasions. In three cases, a fellow group member went to the board and took the lecture from the person who was floundering. These transfers were done with surprising tact and grace, and very little assistance from the faculty member. In the other two cases, the teacher took the lecture—both times at the request of the student who was
Perhaps the lowest low was that in a class of approximately 70 students, six had not passed any of the weekly quizzes by midterm. Several groups had received bonus points for one or more quizzes, but four groups had yet to receive any by the middle of the term, and because of the six no group had received the teaching bonus. After examining all the quiz grades, the teacher had the difficult task of telling these six people that they were no longer to be considered in their group for the purpose of quiz grading, but would still be expected to participate during their week of teaching. To do this in as non-intimidating a manner as possible, an announcement was made in class without naming students. The comment was made that the students who had failed each quiz knew who they were, that they were not considered in their group for the purpose of bonus points on quizzes, and that they would be reinstated upon receiving two weekly quiz grades of 70% or higher. Making the announcement in this way did not finger any student publicly and seemed to be well received by those students who had been working hard in groups that happened to have an underachiever. By the end of the course two of the six students had achieved two 70% or higher quiz grades and were reinstated into their groups for the purpose of bonus points. Being removed from the student group for the purpose of grading was not designed to lower any student’s grade. The course syllabus given out at the beginning of the semester indicated that the two lowest grades on weekly quizzes for each student would be dropped. However, students who had not passed any quizzes by midterm already had significantly lowered what would be their final grade, regardless of the two dropped quizzes. Scope and Limitations of the Technique This technique appears to have proven itself worthwhile, although it is admitted that it has not yet been used extensively and thus lacks a large amount of data to support it. It does require more work outside the classroom on the part of the faculty member, but the rewards appear to be worth the effort. In particular, the students’ enthusiasm was refreshing.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 2 February 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
195
In the Classroom Table 1. Average Grades on Selected Exam Questions a
Grade on Exam Question ∆
Subject
Class Teaching Group
Lewis structures
8.8
9.5
+0.7
3-Dimensional molecular structures
8.0
7.8
᎑l0.2
Intermolecular forces
8.3
8.6
+0.3
Acid–base trends
7.9
8.2
+0.3
Metal activity series
7.8
8.0
+0.2
Ideal gas law
7.8
8.2
+0.4
aOut
of a possible 10 points.
There are limitations for this type of teaching. Perhaps the most obvious is class size. Classes of more than 100 students are still disappointingly common; I believe 100 students is probably the upper limit for the number who could be incorporated into such a learning technique. Students’ ability and preparation turned out not to be the limitation that had been predicted. The class chosen for this teaching and learning experiment was a mixed group. Although some of them had come to the university with high test scores, the majority had been placed in a preparatory chemistry class prior to this 100-level general chemistry class. There was no correlation, however, between how well a student performed in the class and his or her previous background. Assessment Course evaluations were used as both a formative and a summative assessment method. Students had been informed at the outset of the class that a midterm course evaluation would be given as well as the customary end-of-term course evaluation required by the university. The midterm course evaluations were especially revealing, when compared to the undercurrent of student comments that had run through the course. A vocal minority repeatedly asked in a half-joking manner what was the teacher being paid for if they had to do the teaching. Yet at midterm, student opinion ran approximately 3 to 1 in favor of this maximum incentive, minimum discipline teaching technique. A number of comments were made on these evaluations indicating that students felt they had learned the subject matter they had to teach far better than they routinely learned subject matter in any class. The final question on the midterm course evaluation asked if this teaching method should be used again. “Yes” outnumbered “no” by slightly better than 2 to 1. While results for the final course evaluations did not deviate much from the midterm evaluations, one fascinating idea was suggested a number of times. Students commented that points should be taken away from a student who did a poor job of teaching! Although specific formulas for such a discipline were not suggested, it was intriguing to see a number of similar suggestions that some punishment, even if it was minimal, was needed to make students more accountable for their teaching. The final course evaluations maintained the general 2-to-1 ratio of favorable to unfavorable responses to this teaching method. A number of students noted that this technique forced students to study more, to be more accountable for their grade in the class, and to work productively in a group. 196
The final examination for the course was the same as that given for the previous three years. It is a closed, numbered exam that is returned to and kept by the instructor. Students are allowed to check their exam in the instructor’s office, but not take it with them. The students who were taught using this technique had an overall final exam average of 75.9%. This was higher than the average for each of the previous three years by 1.7–6.1%. These numbers are encouraging, but I do not feel they are conclusive. There were 71 students in this class, whereas in the others the total number of students was as high as 144. Also, the students taught with this novel technique had taken the university’s preparatory chemistry in the previous semester, which may be an argument that they were now more familiar with general-level chemistry than those students who hadn’t taken preparatory chemistry. On the other hand, it can be argued that because so many of these students had been placed in the “prep chem” course first, they were not expected to do as well in this subsequent course as their counterparts who had no need for the preparatory class. The final exam was semi-cumulative. Semi-cumulative in this context means the questions asked dealt specifically with the material presented during the latter two-thirds of the semester, but ideas from the first third of the semester were built into the questions. Thus no question specifically asked for temperature conversions, but such conversions might be expected as part of another question. Final exam questions could be correlated to 6 of the 12 student groups. There was one question each on the following subjects: (i) Lewis structures and molecular polarities, (ii) 3-dimensional molecular structures, (iii) intermolecular forces, (iv) the ideal gas law, (v) the metal activity series, and (vi) periodic trends of acids and bases. On the exam questions related to five of the subjects above, the performance of the group that had taught the subject was better than the overall class performance (Table 1). The group teaching about three-dimensional molecular structures scored lower than the class average on the final exam question in that area, but the difference was one of the smallest. The proportion of students who obtained a grade of C or higher was somewhat lower for this teaching technique than for the previous three years (59%, vs 67%, 67%, and 63% respectively for the previous years), but the proportion that completed the course was higher (96%, vs 88%, 89%, and 91% for the previous years). While these numbers may appear to be at odds with each other and at odds with the final examination grades, they may also indicate the high level of student satisfaction with the course. Conclusions The idea of making the students into the teachers may be less used in chemistry than in other fields, but it certainly seems to be feasible. Students can and do support such a method, they get excited about the material they are responsible for, and they generally like the idea of maximum incentive and minimum discipline. This technique requires more from the teacher than the traditional lecture approach, in the form of time commitments to student group meetings, even though the teacher actually presents very few lectures. The effort is justified, however, because the students appear to learn more and are contagious in their enthusiasm.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 78 No. 2 February 2001 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
In the Classroom
Literature Cited 1. The Liberal Art of Science: Agenda for Action; AAAS Publication 90-13S; American Association for the Advancement of Science: Washington, DC, 1990; pp 27–47. 2. Advisory Committee to the National Science Foundation Directorate for Education and Human Resources. Shaping the Future, New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology; A report on its review of undergraduate education; NSF 96-139; National Science Foundation: Arlington, VA, 1996. 3. Towns, M. H. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 67. 4. Gosser, D. K. Jr.; Roth, V. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 185. 5. Deckert, A. A.; Nestor, L. P. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 860. 6. Tobias, S. Revitalizing Undergraduate Science: Why Some Things Work and Most Don’t; Research Corporation: Tucson, AZ, 1992.
7. Gillespie, R. J.; Spencer, J. N.; Moog, R. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 617; 1996, 73, 622. Spencer, J. N.; Moog, R. S.; Gillespie, R. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 627; 1996, 73, 631. 8. Francisco, J. S.; Nicoll, G.; Trautmann, M. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 210. 9. Landis, C. R.; Peace, G. E. Jr.; Scharberg, M. A.; Branz, S.; Spencer, J. N.; Ricci, R. W.; Zumdahl, S. A.; Shaw, D. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 741. 10. Duchovic, R. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 856. 11. Angel, S. A.; Lalonde, D. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 1437. 12. Glenn, K. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 147. 13. Hilosky, A.; Sutman, F.; Schmuckler, J. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 100. 14. Benvenuto, M. A. Chron. Higher Educ. 1999, 45, B9. 15. Video Course Review presents: The Super-charged World of Chemistry [videotape]; Cerebellum Corporation, 1996.
JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 78 No. 2 February 2001 • Journal of Chemical Education
197
