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Chapter 8
Studio Format General Chemistry: A Method for Increasing Chemistry Success for Students of Underrepresented Backgrounds Jane Brock Greco* Department of Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland 21218, United States *E-mail:
[email protected] In the studio model, the lecture and the laboratory are fully integrated. In our implementation, the class met for three 1 hour 50 minute periods weekly. Classes could include laboratory activities, interactive lectures or group problem solving. The course was targeted to students who were academically under-prepared to succeed in general chemistry. The course consisted of a mixture of students who were encouraged to enroll due to low chemistry knowledge on a pretest and open enrollment students. Regression analysis on students’ demographic characteristics suggests that students enrolling in the studio class had a 0.58 increase in chemistry GPA compared to those in the traditional lecture/lab combination course. Students co-enrolled in a traditional biology class also demonstrated greater improvement on the chemistry related questions on the biology final exam, and these gains appeared to continue in the second semester when all students took the same lecture/laboratory combination.
Currently over 60% of students who enter college with the intention to graduate with a STEM degree fail to complete it. This situation is even more problematic for women and underrepresented minorities, who make up over 70% of college students but only 45% of STEM degree recipients (1). In order to increase the number of STEM graduates, it is necessary to both improve
© 2018 American Chemical Society Kishbaugh and Cessna; Increasing Retention of Under-Represented Students in STEM through Affective and Cognitive Interventions ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
retention rates in STEM through higher quality teaching, and specifically target interventions to under-represented students. A meta-analysis of studies published on active learning found that on average active learning techniques increase exam scores by 6%, and that students were one and a half times more likely to fail in more traditional courses (2). Active learning is beneficial to all students, but a highly structured active learning class in biology (3) and peer led team learning instead of a lecture in chemistry (4) have been shown to reduce achievement gaps. As introductory chemistry is required for many different STEM majors, success in general chemistry is frequently required to continue as a STEM major. Many studies have been conducted to examine the factors that influence success in general chemistry (5). Math SAT scores (6, 7), and prior chemistry content knowledge (8), have been linked to success in general chemistry. The very high correlation between pretest score and chemistry grade indicates that prior knowledge is important for success in chemistry (8). A comprehensive review of factors influencing general chemistry found that when high school preparation was included, that the effect of underrepresented minority status was quite small (5).They suggested that the studies that find a larger performance gap for underrepresented minority students do not control for the fact that underrepresented minorities frequently attend high schools where academic opportunities are more limited. The studio format of teaching involves integrating the lecture and the lab component of a science course in an active learning environment. The largest implementations of the studio model have been through SCALE-UP (Student Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside Down Pedagogies) (9), and many of the adopters have been instructors of introductory physics courses. The implementation for introductory chemistry has been more limited. Published accounts of studio chemistry include implementations at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (10), University of Michigan (11) and California Polytechnic (12). Many of these reports have focused primarily on how the model was implemented rather than extensive analysis of the success of this model. More recently, the group at Cal Poly has published a detailed analysis of the success of their studio chemistry model, and included data on the performance of their least prepared students (13).
Study Motivation and Research Questions Prior research has suggested that active learning techniques can serve to reduce the achievement gap. Pre-requisite knowledge is important to success in chemistry and many students from under-represented backgrounds have not been exposed to the prerequisite skills and knowledge during the course of their high school careers. The research questions are (1) What is the effect of a studio chemistry format course on student success, as measured by overall course grades, for students from at risk backgrounds (first-generation college students, low income students, and under-represented minorities)? 132 Kishbaugh and Cessna; Increasing Retention of Under-Represented Students in STEM through Affective and Cognitive Interventions ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
(2) What is the effect of a studio chemistry format course on a conceptual understanding of chemical concepts? (3) Can the understanding of chemical concepts be transferred to other courses?
Methods Description of Studio Chemistry Course Format The studio chemistry course was designed as an alternative to the traditional general chemistry lecture and lab course. The traditional model consists of three fifty-minute lectures and an independent weekly three-hour laboratory course. The lecture course is taught in two sections with two different instructors and has approximately three hundred students in each section. The laboratory course is taught in six sections of one hundred students by a single instructor. There is an optional peer led team learning program, and students with a weak background in chemistry are encouraged to enroll in chemistry with problem-solving, which is a 0 credit, 2-hour weekly course of approximately 20 students that provides students that opportunity to meet in a small group with a third chemistry faculty member to work on problem solving skills. The lecture sequence covers stoichiometry, chemical formulas, Lewis structures, VSEPR, Gases, Intermolecular Forces and Liquids, Enthalpy and Entropy, Vapor Pressure and Phase Diagrams, Gas Phase Equilibrium reactions, Acid-Base Chemistry, and Solubility. The laboratory portion of the course focuses on these topics and covers significant figures, calibration curves, and laboratory skills, including the use of volumetric glassware and filtration. The studio course was designed to provide an alternative to the lecture and lab sequence during the first semester only. As students would be taking the second semester traditional lecture and lab there was no flexibility in the level of coverage of topics. The studio course met for three 110-minute periods weekly. These meetings could take place in a classroom with movable desks or in a laboratory. Based on the available laboratory space for this project, the course size was limited to 32 students, and 29 students persisted in the course after the drop deadline for courses. This is consistent with the standard variation of students choosing classes and lab sections during the first several weeks of classes. The class time was used for interactive lectures (utilizing the i-clicker classroom response system) (14), group problem solving, demonstrations and laboratory activities. The laboratory activities were placed where appropriate to directly correspond to the material that was covered in lecture. All courses used the same textbook (Atkins, Chemical Principles) and the Sapling system for electronic homework. In the studio course, students were allowed two unexcused absences and were required to complete a make-up assignment to catch up from an excused absence. Instead of weekly homework, assignments were due in the Sapling system three times a week to make sure that students completed the necessary problems after each lecture to prepare for the next lecture. 133 Kishbaugh and Cessna; Increasing Retention of Under-Represented Students in STEM through Affective and Cognitive Interventions ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
Student Recruitment The course was listed on the enrollment software and presented to all incoming freshman as an alternative to taking both the corresponding lecture and laboratory course. The course was presented to freshman advisors as being focused for students who were underprepared as an alternative for students who would be taking the problem-solving course. Students who are considered at risk include students who are first-generation college students, Pell grant recipients or otherwise low income, students from under-resourced high schools and under-represented minorities. These students are invited to participate in enrichment programs through the Center for Student Success. Students in these programs are tested for chemistry knowledge during the summer before matriculation through the ALEKS (15) program and strongly encouraged to complete summer online coursework in this system. Students who were identified as having weak chemistry knowledge, approximately the lowest third of incoming chemistry knowledge based on testing the entire freshman class in Fall 2014, were strongly recommended to take either the problem-solving course or the studio chemistry course. The 30 students recommended for intervention divided themselves equally between the studio course and the traditional lecture/lab sequence. One third of the students in the lecture/lab sequence chose to take the additional problem-solving course.
Data Collection Math SAT score or ACT scores, AP chemistry scores when available and course grades were obtained from the registrar’s office. ACT scores were converted to SAT scores using a correspondence table, and the maximum of the math testing was used. ALEKS scores and Exam 3 scores were obtained from the faculty members records. A pre-course survey consisting of parts of the chemical concept inventory and parts of the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey-chemistry version were given during the first class for course planning purposes. The data analysis was approved by the institutional IRB. At the end of the class, the chemical concept inventory and the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey were repeated, and students signed a consent before taking these assessments. Surveys of students under the age of 18 were eliminated.
Results and Discussion Student Demographics A total of 66 students were administered a pretest for chemistry and completed either the standard general chemistry sequence or the studio chemistry course. 134 Kishbaugh and Cessna; Increasing Retention of Under-Represented Students in STEM through Affective and Cognitive Interventions ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
The students who were administered the pretest were all first-generation college students, Pell grant recipients, or under-represented minority students. Thirty of these students were identified as having very low prior content in chemistry (approximately the lower third of content knowledge based on the overall student population in general chemistry at Johns Hopkins) and it was recommended that they either complete the studio course or include the problem-solving course. These students distributed themselves equally between the traditional lecture and laboratory course and the studio chemistry course. However, while students with low prior content represented 52% of the studio course, they represented only a small fraction of the lecture course. The remaining 36 students who were tested had a variety of scores, five students who were just above the recommended cut off for low content knowledge chose to take the studio course with their friends. When considering all students, the math SAT scores between the students enrolled in the studio course and in the traditional lecture was quite different. The average math SAT for students in the studio course was 686 (standard deviation: 54) compared to an average math SAT of 740 (standard deviation: 48) for the traditional lecture. Of note, the 25% percentile math SAT at Johns Hopkins for the Fall 2016 entering class was 710. 66% of the studio class had math SAT below 710 compared to the 22% of the lecture course. It has been found that persistence in STEM fields is generally under 20% for students who are in the bottom third of the math SAT for their school, regardless of their actual score (16).
Common Exam
Both the lecture course and the studio course included a total of four exams; three over the course of the semester and a cumulative final exam. The laboratory course also had two exams, whereas the laboratory concepts were incorporated into the examinations in the studio course. For the third exam, a common 70-point exam was prepared by one of the two lecture professors for their section with input from the studio professor. The lecture course took the 70-point exam during a 50-minute examination period, and the studio students took a 90-minute exam consisting of the common 70 points and an additional 30 points covering additional content due to different timing of the second exam. Due to the scheduling of different sections, only five of the fifteen students recommended for intervention were in the section of the lecture course that participated in the common exam. The results of the common exam are shown in Table 1. While the students in the studio course had a lower overall median than the students in the large lecture course, this is to be expected because most of them entered with significantly lower content knowledge and math SAT scores. While the sample numbers are small, what is notable that a full third of students in the studio course were able to obtain an above median score and a significant portion where able to obtain very high scores. This suggests that the studio format provided an avenue for students with low initial content knowledge to succeed in the course. 135 Kishbaugh and Cessna; Increasing Retention of Under-Represented Students in STEM through Affective and Cognitive Interventions ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
Table 1. Comparison of Students Selected for Extra Intervention on 70 Points of Identical Questions Recommended for intervention Lecture
Lecture
Studio
Median
56
50
51
Average
53.5
48.2
49.2
Range
24-70
40-53
18-69
% over 56/70
45%
0%
33%
Number
300
5
15
% over 60/70
27%
0%
20%
Validation of Consistency in Student Grades Every effort was made to have a standardized set of expectations, and consistent grading between the sections. Complicating the comparison between the two classes is that the studio course is a 4-credit lecture and lab combination course compared to a 3-credit lecture course and a 1-credit laboratory course. A combined lecture and lab grade for the traditional model students was calculated by combining 75% of their lecture grade and 25% of their lab grade. The common third exam provides an opportunity to calibrate the grading between the two classes. Regression analysis was used to correlate the third exam grade to either the final lecture grade or the combined grade. The assigned grade in the studio chemistry course was used for both analyses. As expected, the correlation between the 70-point third exam and overall grade was very high. A variable representing being enrolled in the studio course compared to the traditional lecture was added to the regression analysis, but it was highly insignificant (P=.95, .90) while the exam 3 grade was highly significant. The common exam was given in only one lecture section. However, students from both lecture sections are in the same lab course, which is a single course taught by one professor. The lecture grades are highly correlated with the lab grades (R2=.55, P
