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Chapter 1
Strategies for Engagement: Enhancing Your Teaching David E. Gardner* Dept. of Physical Sciences, Lander University, Greenwood, South Carolina 29649, United States *E-mail:
[email protected] This chapter examines engagement in the broader context of teaching and learning, addresses why student engagement is important, and provides suggestions for how to encourage students to engage meaningfully. The chapter views the purpose of education through a lens of acculturation in which the goal is for learners to transition from students into chemical practitioners. By structuring our classes and activities to be investigative and more like research, we can encourage meaningful engagement within our students and provide them opportunities to become intellectually independent.
Introduction This book is a collection of ideas about increasing student engagement in physical chemistry. The authors contributing to this volume share the common desire to improve the teaching and learning of physical chemistry and have a wide range of experiences, backgrounds, and instructional situations. The ideas presented are as varied as the authors themselves and they should be used as a source of inspiration for increasing engagement with your own students. Because of the unique set of circumstances each instructor faces, it is likely that you must adapt and modify the ideas presented as appropriate for your situation. The purpose of this chapter is to examine engagement in the broader context of teaching and learning and then to provide guidance and suggestions about how to incorporate engagement into your classroom. It is our hope that you are able to take the material presented in this book to enhance both your teaching and your students’ understanding of physical chemistry. © 2018 American Chemical Society Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
To achieve our goal of improving teaching and student understanding of physical chemistry using engagement, we must address three basic, though pertinent questions: 1) What is engagement? 2) Why is engagement important? 3) How do I promote engagement? It is important to note that in order to address these questions, we must cross a very significant, yet perhaps barely perceptible barrier. These questions lie outside of physical chemistry; thus, we must look to other fields such as education and anthropology for guidance. Additionally, physical chemistry is peculiar in its precision of language, both verbal and mathematical. Words like heat, work, and energy level have precise meanings. Further, many words are so precise that we use mathematical equations in their definition. By comparison, within the realm of education, this level of mathematical precision is simply not possible, and perhaps, not even desirable. Education deals with people. People are messy and chaotic and as is the case with all other fields of study involving people such as law, medicine, finance, and religion, we must accept the limitations inherent in understanding people.
What Is Engagement? There is no simple, commonly accepted definition of what student engagement means. Thus, this paper will present a definition of engagement that contains two aspects. We begin our definition by noting that the word “engagement” implies student action. From a learning point of view, paying attention, listening, and reading seem to be the most passive options for learning, so our definition of engagement must include an action level that goes beyond these most passive means. Our first aspect of engagement means students are actively thinking and involved in their learning in ways that go beyond merely paying attention, listening, and/or reading. However, actively thinking cannot be the only aspect for engagement for several important reasons. One, engagement is not our choice. Although instructors have a role to play, engagement is a decision of the student, not the instructor. There is an old saying that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. Likewise, from the perspective of teaching and learning, you can lead students to knowledge but you cannot make them think. Two, it can be difficult to determine whether someone is actively thinking. Indeed, a student may choose to be “faking it” to give the appearance of being involved, while in reality, he or she is putting forth little actual effort towards meaningful learning. Ultimately, since engagement is an internal choice by the student, we must consider not only what students are doing, but how they are doing it. Are the actions that a student does authentic, or is the student merely going through the motions? 2 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
The second aspect of engagement involves a helpful idea from the field of mathematics education. Skemp characterized students as pursuing either instrumental or relational learning (1). He described instrumental learning in mathematics as “rules without reasons.” In contrast, relational learning means understanding both the rules of what to do along with the reasons for why you are doing it. He argued that instrumental learning is shallower while relational learning is deeper. In our definition, student engagement also implies relational learning. Skemp points out that the difference between instrumental and relational lies in what the students perceive their goal to be and how they approach achieving that goal. Herron articulated a similar sentiment in his Principle of Minimum Effort that states students tend to do the minimum amount of work necessary to get the grade they desire (2). Students pursing instrumental learning will adopt a variety of superficial learning strategies that tend be much easier, much quicker, and can often get students to the correct final answer on an assignment or test. The most prominent feature of instrumental learning is a heavy reliance on memorization. On the other hand, Skemp points out that relational learning, although more challenging at the early stages, leads to a situation in which there is much less need to memorize. Skemp further argues relational learning is generally preferable as the superficial techniques and strategies of instrumental learning tend to fail for complicated situations. Instrumental and relational learning are also apparent in chemistry. Gardner and Bodner identified a superficial level of learning in undergraduate physical chemistry students described as a problem-solving mindset (3). Because of the nature of physical chemistry, many superficial learning strategies (e.g., memorization) are not effective. Thus, many students struggle with physical chemistry because the superficial strategies that might have been successful in lower-level courses no longer work and they do not yet recognize the need to adopt a different strategy. Bhattacharyya found similar superficial strategies employed by organic chemistry graduate students (4). In that study, the authors identified a series of superficial ways that first-year graduate students approached solving complicated organic synthesis problems. More importantly, they also identified that more experienced graduate students and faculty advisors pursued deeper, more meaningful strategies on these same problems. The final point to emphasize regarding the previously mentioned studies is that superficial strategies sometimes succeed in getting students to the correct answer. Skemp points out instructors can significantly influence which learning approach students adopt (2). When instructors emphasize instrumental learning and tend to teach rules without reasons, students frequently adopt instrumental approaches. For example, in the physical chemistry study (3), one chemical engineering student confided that he had little understanding of the material and was getting a good grade in class only because he was good at math. His instrumental learning approach successfully masked his lack of deeper understanding. Furthermore, because the instructor mostly taught rules without reasons and assessed his class that way, there was no incentive for that particular 3 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
student to work any harder to learn more deeply. The additional effort to understand the material would have no tangible effect on his grade in the class. Thus, our definition of student engagement implies both actively thinking and relational learning. Engaged students are actively involved in learning, and not merely passive observers. Furthermore, they willingly adopt strategies that lead to deeper and meaningful learning as opposed to superficial techniques they hope yield the grade they want with the least amount of effort.
Why Is Engagement Important? On a simple level, it seems intuitively obvious and appealing that having students engaged in meaningful learning is preferable to superficial learning. As an example, consider the situation of cheating, a term that describes a wide range of undesirable student behaviors. We punish students for cheating because those behaviors represent extreme cases of superficial learning strategies. Presumably, most students cheat because they are trying to hide the fact that they have limited meaningful learning about the subject. However, engagement plays a critical educational role beyond such simplistic notions that deeper learning is better. To understand this critical role, we first need to examine carefully the very purpose of instruction. Chemistry is profession that involves a community of practitioners and the chemical community has developed a set of believes, attitudes, and expectations related to training and education which are worth exploring. We will examine two lenses through we can view the purpose of education. The first lens is the predominant, traditional understanding. The second lens is a recent addition into the chemical education community and represents a more holistic and robust understanding. The Vaccination Model of Chemistry Instruction The traditional philosophy embedded in the chemical curriculum follows what George Bodner describes as “vaccination model” approach (5). According to this idea, instructors expose students to a variety of chemical concepts because we believe that exposing students to a topic, even if only briefly, will be beneficial for them in case they encounter the ideas later in their career. Bodner coined the term “vaccination model” because we commonly treat instruction in a manner similar to giving vaccinations to help prevent illness. Furthermore, faculty often treat exposure to a topic in an earlier course as an indication that no further coverage is necessary. (“They taught that topic to them as freshman, so there is no need to discuss it again in the sophomore course.”) Although the vaccination model has been a predominant paradigm for generations, there are drawbacks associated with it. First, chemistry is a broad field and it is impossible to touch upon all potential topics in the course of an undergraduate career. Similarly, physical chemistry is far too large to conveniently squeeze into just one or two semesters. Thus, instructors must make decisions as to which topics to include and which to omit. Second, students in our classes and programs pursue a wide range of further schooling and career options. This 4 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
makes it nearly impossible to identify which topics are the most important ones to which our students need exposure. Third, the pace of innovation and creation of chemical knowledge is so fast that our students will assuredly encounter new concepts. Therefore, we must face the reality that, despite our best efforts to the contrary, our students will face situations to which they do not have exposure. The other impact of the vaccination model is tension between depth and breadth; the model favors breadth of exposure to depth of understanding. Chemistry textbooks routinely include far more material than can be covered in class. If instructors are not careful, in their attempt to cover as many topics as possible they may move too quickly and inadvertently create a situation in which their students preferentially adopt superficial learning strategies. Thus, student engagement is valuable because it provides depth in an environment that pushes for breadth. Cultivating Independent Chemical Thinkers The vaccination model is a convenient label that describes underlying beliefs and practices the chemical community has traditionally used regarding education. However, the vaccination model is narrow-minded because it over-emphasizes content knowledge as the key factor that distinguishes chemistry practitioners from students. Recent chemical education studies using acculturation into a community of practice as a framework shed light onto the process by which students transition into chemical practitioners (4, 6, 7). These studies demonstrate that being a chemical practitioner requires more than just content knowledge. Specifically, practitioners possess modes of thinking and acting that are qualitatively different from students. This chapter presents an alternative lens through which to view the purpose of education that more closely aligns from research on acculturation as it relates to chemistry. The new lens is “cultivating independent chemical thinkers.” While still valuing the importance of chemical content knowledge traditionally used, it acknowledges the vital role acculturation plays in preparing students to enter into the chemical profession. For example, Bhattacharyya observed three differences in solving organic synthesis problems between organic chemistry graduate students in their first-year with those in their third-year (4). One, first-year students seemed to treat the problems only as a paper-and-pencil exercise and employed superficial organic chemistry problem solving strategies. Even though these students had already earned a bachelor’s degree and were taking their first graduate class in the field they intended to pursue, their approach to learning was instrumental. On the other hand, third-year students possessed greater practitioner-like behavior by realizing that someone might use the proposed steps in lab and thus additional considerations such as selectivity or minimizing the number of synthetic steps also factored into their thinking. Two, first-year students seemed unable to evaluate data presented in the literature. By contrast, third-year students were generally able to appraise data quality and recognized the distinction in quality between publications in highly respected journals to those in journals of lesser reputation. Three, third-year students analyzed and evaluated their proposed 5 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
syntheses indicating a level of self-reflection. On the other hand, first-year students did little analysis or evaluation of their synthetic proposal, and often seemed pleased just to have a proposal at all. The first-year organic chemistry graduate students in Bhattacharyya’s study already possessed considerable organic chemistry content knowledge. However, that knowledge was not yet meaningful and relevant to them. They displayed instrumental understanding and behavior. In contrast, he found the more experienced third-year graduate students quite literally perceived the synthesis problems differently. Further, he identified student perception to be a necessary factor for them to create relevance and meaning. In a different study, Johnson examined the norms of discourse between undergraduate students participating in biochemistry research projects and their research mentors (6, 7). In a series of case studies, Johnson identified numerous problems and challenges for students, including: planning a course of action, decision-making, interpretation of results, self-regulation, handling negative or anomalous results, dealing with uncertainty, and the role of funding in research. Discussions on these topics were typical of daily interactions and none belongs to the normal definition of content knowledge. Instead, Johnson presents her findings in the context of independence and ownership. To develop a sense of ownership of the research project and to move towards greater independence required that the students move beyond passively receiving instructions from their mentors. They had to become active participants in the process. We now return to the question of why engagement is important. Pursuing engagement in our courses is highly beneficial regardless of which educational lens one uses. From the narrower vaccination model perspective, engagement involves deeper, meaningful learning. Additionally, engagement promotes depth of understanding that counterbalances the tendency to push for ever-increasing breadth. From the broader independent chemical thinker perspective, both aspects of engagement are developmentally important as students move towards the intellectual independence seen in practitioners. Engagement requires actively thinking, a critical component of developing a sense of ownership and independence. Engagement involves meaningful learning. This distinction between instrumental and relational approaches was a key differentiating characteristic between students and practitioners.
How Do I Promote Engagement? Having discussed what engagement is and why it is important, we now focus on how to promote engagement in our classes. However, although acculturation research like the studies mentioned above is common in anthropology, research on acculturation in chemistry is limited. More importantly, research studies rarely attempt to answer questions of which acculturation practices should be used. Therefore, the literature offers little practical guidance on what we should do. Rather, it helps us understand the characteristics effective practices possess. 6 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
For instance, the first-year organic chemistry graduate students in Bhattacharyya’s study displayed instrumental understanding (4). Bhattacharyya identified three key interconnected factors that fostered their development into practitioners. All of these factors centered on student willingness to seek depth and meaning. First, students needed to perceive that the task was “real.” The goal of the activity was a real outcome that a practitioner would do. Second, they must perceive the process of achieving that goal as “authentic.” This is how practitioners would actually go about getting to the desired goal. When students perceived the goal was real and the process was authentic, their attitudes about the learning process changed. They shifted away from their initial superficial learning strategies and moved towards meaningful approaches. They cared about the learning process because they perceived value and usefulness, not just as a graduation requirement, but also as part of their future careers. Third, they needed scaffolding from a “knowledgeable other” (i.e. a teacher or mentor) in the form of feedback about the authentic activity. In other words, they needed some guidance to get there. From this study, Bhattacharyya concluded that activities which are real and authentic and under the guidance of a mentor are more likely to convince students into adopting the meaningful approaches employed by practitioners. Therefore, activities that are real and authentic align with our desire for student engagement. However, he gives little practical guidance on how to design an activity that students will perceive as real and authentic. For comparison, Johnson’s study highlights the challenges faced by undergraduate students doing biochemistry research (6, 7). The discourses she examined contained considerable discussion on the intellectual skills and habits such as decision-making, planning, or self-regulation that practitioners employ on a daily basis. In addition, she found that students needed to be included in the mental heavy lifting and have opportunities to participate in the various aspects of research such as making decisions or data interpretation. She also explored the role the mentors played in helping students develop ownership in the research and move towards independence. Thus, her research ties closely to student engagement because fostering independence involves students to become more active in the research process. Similarly, fostering student engagement involves encouraging the students to become active thinkers, rather than passive observers. Lastly, although she identifies many characteristics of effective mentors, her research was not intended to be a guidebook on how to become an effective mentor, nor should it be used as such. The Lessons of Scouting Scouting is useful to our purpose of promoting engagement for several reasons. First, scouting has considerable experience in helping youth develop and become involved members of the community. This process bears many similarities to the process of acculturating students into the community of chemistry practice. Second, many scouting activities promote engagement as we have defined it in this chapter. Third, scouting has spent considerable effort over the years learning how to teach its adult volunteers how to make the scouting 7 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
program be as effective and engaging as possible. There are three lessons from scouting that are particularly relevant in promoting engagement in chemistry: #1) Keep it simple, make it fun. #2) Recognize learning opportunities. Don’t do for the youth what they can do for themselves. #3) Provide a safe environment in which to fail.
Keep it simple, make it fun. Scouting takes many real tasks and turns them into games and challenges, or competitions. The only requirement is a little creativity and a willingness to look for fun in otherwise mundane things. For example, an old scoutmaster once told me that on campouts, he would offer a dollar to the first scout who could successfully locate and identify poison ivy at the campsite. For the low price of one dollar per campout, his scouts became very proficient at learning to identify poison ivy. Furthermore, without having to do the work himself, the scoutmaster quickly learned which nearby areas his scouts should avoid. This advice also applies to science. Science ought to be fun. Keeping it simple means keeping authenticity. It means taking tasks that are real and authentic and finding ways to make them fun and enjoyable. Making learning fun greatly increases the likelihood of student buy-in so that he or she chooses the deeper, meaningful approaches needed for engagement. There are many ways to incorporate fun, or at least real and authentic experiences, into your teaching and many traditional lab experiments can be readily adapted to do this. One method is to structure the activity as an investigation or a question to answer. For example, Hunnicutt and coworkers present a kinetics experiment that is structured as an investigation to determine which apple is best for making fruit salad (8). In my own course, I modified an existing quinine fluorescence lab that was similar to one students encountered in their analytical course by asking the students two questions: why did the analytical lab instructions tell you to put a little bit of sulfuric acid into the sample? Does the choice of acid matter? (The presence of acid enhances the signal and yes, acid selection matters. In particular, I neglect to inform students that halides quench quinine fluorescence, so I encourage them to use HCl because its effect on the intensity of the fluorescence signal is unexpected.)
Recognize learning opportunities. Don’t do for the youth what they can do for themselves. This piece of wisdom addresses a key element of effective mentoring, regardless of the context of that mentoring. In the scouting world, every time an adult leader does a task for a scout that he or she is capable of doing on his or her own, the adult is stealing a learning opportunity from that scout. The challenge becomes recognizing the boundary between which tasks a youth truly is capable 8 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
of doing and which are too far beyond the current skill level. Ideally, mentoring enables people to become increasingly able to do more on their own as part of the process of becoming independent. This advice also applies to science and both Bhattacharyya and Johnson indicate the importance guidance/mentoring plays in the acculturation process of becoming chemical practitioners (4, 6, 7). In particular, Johnson highlights the need for research mentors to provide opportunities for their students to have meaningful participation in tasks such as decision-making, data analysis, and planning. These opportunities allow students to develop skills they will need as practitioners and are part of the process of helping them become independent. One way to incorporate this in your teaching is to involve students in experimental set-up and sample preparation. Johnson found research students devoted a significant amount of time at the start of each workday to preparation. All of the mentors in her study expected the research students would be responsible for preparation. While the mentors were willing to provide initial guidance and training on how to perform a particular task, that willingness to assist on the task had a time limitation on it. After the initial time had expired, if a student approached the mentor for guidance, the mentor would indicate that student would have to figure it out on his or her own. In a similar manner, students enrolled in physical chemistry courses should have the skills to set up basic lab equipment necessary for techniques like distillation or titration. They also have the skills to make a wide range of solutions by dissolving a solid or diluting a concentrated stock solution. When instructors completely set up and prepare the chemicals students need for an experiment, they rob students of an opportunity to hone basic lab skills important in the daily routine of many practicing chemists. Furthermore, such mundane tasks also happen to be both real and authentic. A second method to incorporate the advice of recognizing learning opportunities is to grant students considerable procedural latitude. Many traditional cookbook lab activities involve highly detailed procedures that frequently rob students of the opportunity to think for themselves. POGIL – PCL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning in the Physical Chemistry Lab) experiments by Hunnicutt and co-workers include experimental protocols of a limited number of generalized instructions rather than highly detailed step-by-step procedures (8, 9). Because the protocols are broad in scope, they allow room for students to make a variety of experimental decisions. Moreover, protocols are flexible which allows students to adapt them to new circumstances. This is particularly important, as the labs are cyclical in structure. There is an initial exploration phase in which students collect quick and easy data to understand the basic chemical concepts. Additional experimentation on more advanced concepts follows later. Dukes reports an extreme example of procedural latitude in an undergraduate analytical chemistry experiment in which he presents a red velvet cake to his students with the instruction to determine the amount of red food coloring that is present in the cake (10). With the exception of a little basic instruction on how to use the UV-Vis spectrometer, he gives them very little additional guidance on how to complete the task. The students have great freedom in how they approach answering the question. Indeed, the ultimate purpose of that experiment is to give 9 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
students the opportunity to make decisions and figure it out on their own using the knowledge and skills they already possess. Procedural latitude also connects to the earlier suggestion of structuring activities as investigations to help them be real and authentic. In order for a student to perceive an investigation-type activity as authentic, they must have the opportunity to do some of the mental heavy lifting of the investigation. Therefore, procedural latitude must be part of the investigation if we wish students to perceive it as authentic. An activity presented to students as an investigation, but coupled with a highly detailed procedure of how to conduct the investigation would give the students little ownership in the activity and would decrease the likelihood that they approach the activity in meaningful ways. The students involved in the red velvet cake lab clearly valued the experience, although they did not necessarily like or enjoy it (10). They consistently report a sense of pride in being able to accomplish the task using a procedure they develop. The most significant indicator of the value they place on the experience is that over the course of 3 years and 35 students, none of the students has yet given away the answer of how to determine the amount of food coloring in the cake to subsequent classes of students.
Provide a safe environment in which to fail. This final bit of advice also applies to effective mentoring and is as relevant in science as it is in scouting. As we give students more responsibilities to do for themselves, and as we provide them procedural latitude, we provide opportunities for them to fail. Practicing and developing new skills takes time and patience. Sometimes failure occurs because they have not yet fully mastered the skill. Likewise, making effective decisions requires wisdom and experience. Hence, failure may occur because the students have made a poor choice. In this context, giving students that opportunity to try something new and fail at it can be a powerful teaching tool. By encouraging students to view failure as another, though sometimes painful, learning opportunity we can teach lessons about grit, perseverance, and determination. In the red velvet cake experiment, before students physically do anything in the lab, they must present a basic procedure to the instructor indicating what they propose to do (10). The instructor only checks the procedure to ensure safety of the student, their classmates, and the equipment. However, the instructor will not stop them from making poor choices that yield useless results. Interestingly, safety is one of students’ favorite aspects of the lab because they do not perceive cake to be a dangerous material. As mentioned earlier, a key challenge of mentoring is learning how to set appropriate boundaries for students. A major part of that challenge is recognizing what is outside of the students’ comfort zone provides them growth opportunities, and what is truly dangerous. Thus, when incorporating procedural latitude, safeguard mechanisms and/or well-marked outer boundaries must be established. While instructors must ensure health and safety, we must be careful against 10 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
intervening too quickly to prevent failure in non-hazardous situations because in many cases, failures are highly significant learning opportunities. Further Considerations about Promoting Engagement Collectively, incorporating the lessons of scouting into your class will enhance the likelihood that students meaningfully engage with the material and acquire mental ownership. Furthermore, as Johnson reveals, these elements are also present in authentic research experiences (6). Therefore, if you seek to improve student engagement in your course and desire to move them towards chemical intellectual independence, design your course and activities to be more like research. Simulating research in your class is a form of guided inquiry. Structure challenges and tasks as investigations. Involve students in experimental setup and design. Provide opportunities for students to close the loop; use the results from one investigation to serve as the foundation of the next. As you implement these strategies, there are several issues to keep in mind. First, guided inquiry activities generally take longer to complete than traditional activities, because doing an investigation yourself to figure out an answer is usually slower than having someone else tell you the answer. Moreover, involving students in experimental design, procedural decisions, and setup requires additional time and further slows topical progress. In general, it takes substantially longer for an inexperienced person to complete an unfamiliar a task than it does a person who is both familiar and experienced. Again, this calls into question the very purpose of chemical instruction. From the perspective of the vaccination model of instruction, students are best served when we expose them to as many topics as possible. Incorporating large amounts of investigative activities would reduce the amount of topical coverage. However, from the perspective of developing independent chemical thinkers, the reduction in topical breadth is not much of a concern so long as the additional depth helps move the students towards greater independence. One simple strategy to increase speed is to allow the class to work collectively. Students can be allowed to pool their data together so that while no individual student or group has sufficient data, the entire class does. Thus, these activities can also serve to teach lessons about teamwork and collaboration. While managing the difficulties of students learning to work together provides its own set of challenges, the effort is usually worth the hassle. In my experience, by the end of their second semester in physical chemistry, my students generally become proficient at selforganizing and distributing the various parts of the workload among the group. Collectively, they are able to investigate far more quickly and effectively than they would have been able to do separately. A second issue to consider when implementing these strategies is the robustness of the activity. While many existing experiments and activities are suitable for an investigative, research-like approach, several factors influence how easily adapted the activity is. It is important to remember that students are novice researchers and these activities are the training grounds upon which they are able to hone their skills and ability. Thus, the best candidates are activities that are both simple and forgiving. Simple means that the initial guiding question of the 11 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
investigation is easy to understand and explain. While students may encounter advanced, complicated ideas through the process of the activity, it is important that students easily grasp the starting point. Forgiving means that the activity generally works well over a wide range of conditions and does not require a high level of skill and precision from the student to yield reasonable results. Much like simplicity, while later stages of the activity can require higher skill levels to complete, the initial stages should be tolerant of lower ability. On the other hand, trial-and-error approaches are not well suited to training student how to operate sensitive, fragile, and expensive equipment. Should you wish for students to use such equipment during an investigation, giving them more traditional training with detailed instructions on correct and safe usage of the equipment is advised. The third and final issue to consider is repetition. Learning to conduct research-like investigations requires skills and habits similar to practitioners. Contrary to the traditional vaccination model of instruction in which a single exposure is sufficient to inoculate the student, fully developed skills rarely occur after a single encounter. Rather, skills develop through multiple iterations over an extended period of time. Thus, no single activity can produce independence in our students. Cultivating independence is a theme that must be infused throughout, so that regardless of the specifics of any particular activity or lesson, students consistently get to practice the skills and habits that eventually lead to mental ownership and intellectual independence.
Summary This chapter addresses three basic questions about engagement: What is engagement, why is it important, and how do I promote it? Engagement means that students actively think and adopt meaningful learning strategies. Rather than simply exposing our students to increasing numbers of topics, we should strive to cultivate intellectual independence in our students. The same strategies that encourage engagement in students are also useful in encouraging intellectual independence. To promote engagement make your class more like research. Keep it fun, give students responsibility, and provide them a safe environment in which to fail as they develop the skills necessary to transition from students to chemical practitioners.
References 1. 2. 3.
Skemp, R. Intelligence, learning, and action; John Wiley & Sons: Chichester, U.K., 1979. Herron, J. D. The chemistry classroom: Formulas for successful teaching; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1996; p 18. Bodner, G. M.; Gardner, D. E.; Briggs, M. W. In Chemists’ guide to effective teaching; Pienta, N., Cooper, M., Greenbowe, T., Eds.; Prentice-Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2005; pp 67−76. 12 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
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Bhattacharyya, G.; Bodner, G. M. Culturing reality: How organic chemistry graduate students develop into practitioners. J. Res. Sci. Teach. 2014, 51 (6), 694–713. 5. Bodner, G. M. Personal communication; this idea has never formally been published. 6. Johnson, S. L. Investigating the conversations that occur during undergraduate research experiences: A case study. Doctoral dissertation, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 2017. 7. Johnson, S. L.; Bodner, G. M. Examining the research experiences of undergraduate biochemistry experiences: A case study approach. FASEB J. 2017, 21 (1) (supplement). 8. Hunnicutt, S. S.; Grushow, A.; Whitnell, R. Guided-inquiry experiments for physical chemistry: The POGIL-PCL model. J. Chem. Educ. 2015, 92 (2), 262–268. 9. Stegall, S. L.; Grushow, A.; Whitnell, R.; Hunnicutt, S. S Evaluating the effectiveness of POGIL-PCL workshops. Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. 2016, 22, 407–416. 10. Dukes, A. D.; Gardner, D. E. An unconventional approach to procedural development in analytical chemistry using food coloring and absorption spectroscopy. Chem. Educator 2017, 22, 208–211.
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