Article pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc
Threaded Introductory Chemistry for Prepharmacy: A Model for Preprofessional Curriculum Redesign Benjamin S. Barth* and Ehren C. Bucholtz Department of Basic Sciences, St. Louis College of Pharmacy, 4588 Parkview Place, St. Louis, Missouri 63110, United States S Supporting Information *
ABSTRACT: Introductory chemistry courses are required as part of the undergraduate preparation necessary for entry into an array of professional programs. Given the varied priorities of the student population in these courses, it can be difficult to present the material such that students see their individual future academic priorities represented in each course. At St. Louis College of Pharmacy, introductory chemistry classes serve a singular population with a declared interest in pursuing further education in the professional pharmacy curriculum. As part of a campus-wide prepharmacy curriculum restructure, the chemistry curriculum was redesigned to take advantage of this focused audience. The result is a new, four semester Threaded Curriculum that merges topics taught in general and organic chemistry with filtering for relevance to prepharmacy. To compare student performance in the new curriculum to the traditional, students were evaluated on 245 common multiple choice exam items as the relevant topics were covered in each course of the curriculum. Initially, traditional curriculum students outperformed the Threaded Curriculum students in first semester organic topics, but both groups scored the same average on the ACS Organic Chemistry End of Year exam. This occurred even though Threaded Curriculum students had only three semesters of chemistry preparation at the time of the exam. Furthermore, Threaded Curriculum students surpassed the national average on the ACS General Chemistry End of Year exam at the fourth semester. This indicates that students can be taught chemistry by providing more relevant topics for their future while still ensuring that students are meeting content goals reflected in standardized chemistry exams. KEYWORDS: First-Year Undergraduate/General, Second-Year Undergraduate, Organic Chemistry, Curriculum, Testing/Assessment
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INTRODUCTION The preprofessional coursework for undergraduate programs leading to careers in healthcare has traditionally consisted of a breadth of preparation in the sciences. Currently, there exists an opportunity for rethinking the basic scientific preparation for students with specific professional goals. The drivers of this opportunity are both top-down, from the professional schools and organizations, and bottom up, with the emergence of Discipline Based Educational Research (DBER)1 within the individual scientific disciplines. For premedical student training, a motivator for this reform has been the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute 2009 report on training of premedical school students.2 This served as foundation for the Association of American Colleges of Pharmacy 2011−2012 Argus Commission Report that described the need for cultivating “Habits of Mind” and the role of prepharmacy education.3 Schools of Pharmacy have been examining the preprofessional curriculum in terms of what courses are required,4 what topics need to be required,5 and about tying the preprofessional curriculum to outcomes rather than specific coursework.6 For prepharmacy students, a significant part of foundational scientific training is in chemistry. A 2009 study found that general chemistry and organic chemistry stand alone as the only © XXXX American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
courses required for admission by 100% of 71 Doctor of Pharmacy programs in the United States.7 However, these chemistry courses are also required by many other preprofessional majors as well as majors in several specific scientific disciplines. For instructors of these courses, this presents the challenge of how these introductory chemistry courses should be taught to an audience with such diverse goals. Much thought has been devoted to this with chemists considering the role a general chemistry course should serve as early as 1929.8 More recently, arguments for the direction of general chemistry have been articulated as part of an American Chemical Society (ACS) task force in 19949 and by Cooper in 2010.10 Collectively, these studies highlight issues with both content and pedagogy to make the case that general chemistry needs to be tailored to fit its target audience. For the organic chemistry curriculum, the Organic Subcommittee of the Curriculum Committee of the Division of Chemical Education of the ACS published reports in 197211 and 197612 with recommendations for content. The content highlighted in those reports is largely reflected in organic chemistry textbook Received: February 17, 2017 Revised: May 30, 2017
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00140 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
Article
Table 1. Four-Semester, Traditional Curriculum and Threaded Chemistry Course Sequence Semester
Traditional curriculum
1 2 3 4
General Chemistry I General Chemistry II Organic Chemistry I Organic Chemistry II
a
Threaded Curriculuma Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry
1: 2: 3: 4:
Threaded Curriculum Sample Topic Sequence
Chemical Structure and Physical Properties Chemical Structure and Reactivity Organic Chemistry with Biological Emphasis Fundamentals of Chemical Quantitative Analysis
Atoms → Bonds → Physical Properties Reaction Kinetics → Acid/Base → Substitution/Elimination Bioavailability → Acetals and Carbohydrates → Biomolecules Concentration → Equilibria → Half-life
Threaded Curriculum was implemented beginning Fall 2014.
pharmaceutics, those faculty were consulted as to what chemistry concepts would be critical for success in future coursework. It was determined that students would need a foundational understanding of: acid/base reactions, chemical kinetics, and how molecular structure relates to biological function. Given those topics as the end goal, the next step in this backward design process was to formalize a list of big ideas that would be the focus as students make progress toward mastering introductory chemistry material. Much work has already been done in this area of chemistry education. In broadly considering the field, Gillespie generated a list of 6 great ideas in chemistry19 and Atkins developed a list described as chemistry’s 9 core ideas.20 The ACS Exams Institute performed a thorough investigation to generate nearly 1000 content-level statements that feed into 10 Anchoring Concepts for Undergraduate Chemistry.21 While this previous work thought broadly about chemistry as a central science, the Threaded Curriculum has the more specific goal of preparing students for success in a professional pharmacy program. Thus, a more narrow list was created by comparing the list of topics that downstream faculty would require to the previous work in developing big ideas in chemistry. The five big ideas for the Threaded Curriculum were established as (1) Atoms and bonding. (2) Structure, function, and intermolecular interactions. (3) Reactions (transformations and mechanism) and kinetics. (4) Energy, thermodynamics, and equilibrium. (5) Experiments, measurements, and data. These big ideas serve as the threads that can be connected while developing a course sequence that is streamlined for the key chemical concepts necessary to prepare students for future success in a professional pharmacy program. To avoid the problem of general chemistry being a disjointed group of topics,13 we focused the content along a storyline that develops from basic principles into more complex subject matter similar to what is done in traditional organic coursework. Building upon the model established at CSBSJU,16 a course sequence was envisioned where many of the more qualitative general chemistry topics could be integrated into an organic chemistry storyline that had been streamlined for students looking to pursue a career in pharmacy. This would have two beneficial effects. First, general and organic chemistry concepts would be learned in context. Typically, concepts are covered from one perspective in general chemistry and again during organic chemistry from a slightly different perspective. By integrating the concepts into one course, the material can be efficiently covered one time at the appropriate depth and then carried forward to applications later in the curriculum sequence. Second, by focusing initially on the qualitative aspects of general chemistry topics, quantitative applications can be moved to the fourth course of the sequence. By then, the
content today with chapters devoted to specific functional groups and the range of topics covering the breadth of material necessary for chemistry majors. Given the state of the general and organic chemistry curricula, many efforts have been made to rework these courses in a variety of ways. Focusing on laying the groundwork in general chemistry, Cooper and Klymkowski developed Chemistry, Life, the Universe, and Everything (CLUE)13 as an approach to a general chemistry course that is focused on their designated big ideas. Reingold at Juniata College challenged the norm by implementing a bioorganic chemistry course as the first course taken by freshmen students.14 At the University of Michigan, students who show appropriate aptitude by way of appropriate exam scores are able to take organic chemistry as first semester freshmen.15 At the College of St. Benedict−St. John’s University (CSBSJU), the chemistry curriculum has been reworked to integrate topics of general and organic chemistry in the introductory classes.16 Finally, as part of the HHMI National Experiment in Undergraduate Science Education, Purdue University has implemented a “1−2−1” chemistry sequence for prepharmacy students.17 This allows appropriately prepared students to complete prerequisite chemistry coursework, including biochemistry, in four semesters by streamlining content for relevancy to pharmacy students. Specifically, students in the Purdue course sequence progress by taking a one semester general chemistry focused on biologically relevant topics, followed by two semesters of organic chemistry, and one semester of biochemistry focused for pharmaceutical science. To meet the requirements of general and organic chemistry coursework at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy, a new series of courses has been implemented with the pharmacy-relevant big ideas of chemistry threaded through them. This “Threaded Curriculum” is designed to focus on specific big ideas like the CLUE general chemistry coursework, focus the content for prepharmacy students like the Purdue curriculum, and integrate the organic chemistry topics with the general chemistry topics like the curriculum at CSBSJU. An additional consequence of integrating the relevant general and organic chemistry topics, as in the CSBSJU coursework, is the delay of the application of mathematical concepts to chemical systems until the final course in the sequence. This allows for more time for students to develop mathematical reasoning in other coursework before integrating the math and chemistry content.
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CURRICULUM DESIGN The structure of the design process for the Threaded Curriculum is similar to backward design as described by Wiggins and McTighe.18 This began by identifying what students should be able to do by the end of a four-course sequence that would fit temporally within the traditional twoyear general/organic chemistry sequence. Since the introductory chemistry courses serve to prepare students for courses such as biochemistry, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology and B
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00140 J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
Article
Table 2. Comparison of Threaded Curriculum to Traditional Curriculum Performance on 245 Multiple Choice Exam Items across Three Semesters of the Threaded Curriculum Parameters
Threaded First Semester
Traditional
Threaded Second Semester
Traditional
Threaded Third Semester
Traditional
a
69 18 30
