Technology and Assessment Strategies for Improving Student

Downloaded by 46.161.58.186 on December 1, 2016 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): November 22, 2016 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2016-1235.pr001

Preface Although the difficulties many students encounter when learning chemistry have been known and explored for decades, there is no consensus on how best to assist and assess their learning. Over the past 10 years, the availability of a range of technological innovations that are intended to improve student learning and assessment has made the choice of teaching and assessment strategies more complex. Many teachers are rapidly adopting new technologies in teaching and assessment although their impacts have not yet been extensively studied. Piecemeal introduction of technology, widely varying contexts, and changing priorities between institutions make it difficult to draw broad conclusions about effective strategies to integrate technology into chemistry teaching. Nonetheless, many researchers have investigated the use of specific technologies in aspects of their teaching and assessment, and this book contributes to a growing body of literature that allows some generalizations to be drawn. Most importantly, specific strategies are described in detail making it possible for others to take advantage of the learning experiences and allowing practitioners to adopt the practice best suited to their needs. Some chapters also include less successful steps in the implementation of technologies, rather than an exclusive focus on a “final state” that might seem imposing to those new to the specific intervention. This book arose out of a symposium held at the 2015 Pacifichem conference in Hawaii, which in turn grew out of discussions held during Thomas Holme’s visit to Australia in 2012. The editorial team shares an interest in the assessment of learning in chemistry, which today is inextricably linked to the use of technology in teaching. Therefore, we invited submissions to the symposium to find out what others are doing in this area. The symposium itself involved 35 presentations from five countries, of which 13 have been contributed as chapters to the book. General tools for chemistry education range from tailored websites (including Web 2.0 interactive features), to optimizing the use of flipped classrooms, to the application of commercial packages in a coherent manner. The first five chapters of the book focus on these aspects of using technology directly in teaching chemistry. One area of great interest in chemistry education is the role of the teaching laboratory and how best to optimize laboratory learning. Although this was not planned as an explicit topic for the Symposium, four chapters in this book relate to different aspects of the laboratory. Two of those chapters discuss the use of short videos as instructional materials to better prepare students for the laboratory experience. One chapter relates to the use of animations for probing students’ atomic level understanding of experimental results, and the fourth explores faculty goals for laboratory learning and their relationship to students’ expectations and experiences. ix Schultz et al.; Technology and Assessment Strategies for Improving Student Learning in Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2016.


The final four chapters of the book are directly related to summative assessment. Different aspects of the development and use of the multiple choice exams developed by the Examinations Institute of the American Chemical Society are described in three chapters. Finally, a metastudy describing the development of a tool to evaluate assessment items of all kinds gives the opportunity for benchmarking between institutions and even countries. The chapters in the book reflect the somewhat different teaching contexts of the countries in which the authors work. We have endeavored to provide enough information to translate between contexts while retaining the vocabulary used in each respective country. Although institutional pressures and student profiles differ somewhat, the overall goal of improving teaching of undergraduate chemistry is shared. Because the specific details of the learning challenges being addressed tend to vary slightly between countries, the solutions that are found are similarly diverse. The result of this mixture of challenges being met is that the resources described in this book are capable of seeding new ideas in each of the environments from which the chapters are drawn. The chapters differ in their scale, ranging from local applications of technology tools to larger national studies, but all describe results that can be applied more broadly. We hope that the reader will find the content interesting and useful in their teaching.

Technology Tools for Chemistry Education 1.

Lawrie, Schultz, Bailey, Al Mamun, Micallef, Williams, and Wright present a study in their chapter that describes how online modules can be constructed to assist the growth of conceptual understanding for students in university-level chemistry classes. In particular, they note three elements that should be present to assist students who are using online resources: (1) scaffolding of the learning experience; (2) visual representations at multiple scales; and (3) routine feedback as students progress through the modules. Patterns of student usage of the modules support the conclusion that this development strategy produces learning tools that students find helpful.

2.

In the chapter by McCollum, the challenge of maintaining traditional skill sets for students while incorporating new methods is described. Specifically, with newer teaching methods, including the use of flipped classrooms which prompt students to engage with materials on their own prior to in-class activities, the ability of students to gain information from reading has become increasingly important. Not all students, however, have sufficiently honed scientific reading skills, so building academic reading circles and assigning students specific roles to fill in these activities can improve learning outcomes when new reading-centric pedagogies are implemented.

3.

In her chapter, Lawrie emphasizes the need to incorporate a multidimensional strategy for teaching with new technologies. This x

Schultz et al.; Technology and Assessment Strategies for Improving Student Learning in Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2016.


model incorporates the skills, knowledge, and experiences of students as well as teachers. By using practices that have been identified via research as being important for student success, the introduction of new web-based learning tools can be implemented and assessed so that learning outcomes are enhanced. Several examples of how this strategy has been employed are included to illustrate the practical implementation needs for employing new technologies in teaching. 4.

Redd, Gravely, Lewis, and Redd in their chapter describe the integration of a set of technology tools to improve the student learning experience. While learning management systems (LMSs) are widely used, they are rarely integrated into the classroom efficiently. Lesser known packages fill the gaps in the LMS, allowing a coherent digital platform that offers differentiated teaching and ease of use.

5.

Venkateswaran provides in her chapter an exemplar of how new learning technologies that are emerging among textbooks can influence student learning. Increasingly publishers are packaging a range of tools as part of the student textbook materials, and the onus lies with instructors to find ways to leverage the new diversity of tools. This chapter describes the trajectory taken by an instructor for the introduction of adaptive learning tools associated with a textbook, including both textual and homework support.

Laboratory Learning 6.

Bretz, Galloway, Orzel, and Gross investigated the connection between faculty goals for learning in the undergraduate general chemistry and organic chemistry laboratory, the experiments conducted in these labs and students’ expectations, and experiences with regard to meaningful learning. Data were collected for all three aspects and the analysis showed that faculty goals do not always align with the selected experiments and that there is little connection between faculty goals and students’ learning.

7.

Kelly designed a number of animations depicting a certain experimental procedure. The animations were designed with significant differences, and students were asked to critique them and select the one that best portrayed the experiment. This exercise provides students the opportunity to practice critiquing the plausibility of animations as they fit with experimental evidence. In a follow-up justification exercise, it was observed that many students were challenged when they had to articulate why the animations’ features fit with the experimental evidence. The justification exercise also revealed that students need more practice learning to critique models in connection to experimental evidence, and how to write in a manner that conveys their thought process. xi

Schultz et al.; Technology and Assessment Strategies for Improving Student Learning in Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2016.


8.

Canal, Lowe, and Fong have reevaluated and modified the way instruction on laboratory techniques is delivered to students in their laboratory courses. In order to focus students’ attention on the proper way to use the glassware and common apparatuses used in most undergraduate laboratories, a laboratory-techniques experiment was developed as well as laboratory technique-centred exercises. They present their approach to improve student learning, instructor observations, and data to support the effectiveness of these initiatives.

9.

Canal, Hanlan, Key, Laveiri, Paskevicius, and Sharma investigated the effectiveness of instructional videos as a teaching tool in the chemistry laboratory curricula at both Simon Fraser University (SFU) and Vancouver Island University (VIU). Five categories of videos used in first, second, and third year laboratory courses were developed, either in-house (by faculty) or with the assistance of visual media professionals. Short student feedback surveys from both institutions indicate that students find the videos to be an effective tool in their education. Most students felt they were better prepared and more confident about their experiments after watching the videos.

Evaluating Summative Assessment 10. Murphy and her colleagues have investigated the use of a comprehensive list of chemistry concepts (the Anchoring Concepts Content Map) to categorize multiple choice exam questions. Use of the list can highlight topics that are not included in the exam and can also aid the preparation of new exams. In this chapter the list is applied to the ACS Exams Institute exams, but it can also be applied to any exam. 11. Luxford and Holme have surveyed a large number of chemistry educators in the US about their views of conceptual understanding in general chemistry and how it can be assessed. In their chapter, they analyze the part of their survey in which participants were asked whether six different mock items test conceptual understanding. The outcomes were correlated with the participants’ personal definitions of what conceptual understanding is. The results are interesting in the diversity of responses to some mock items and may provide insight to educators attempting to frame their own conceptual multiple-choice items. 12. Elkins and Murphy describe in their chapter the use of an online version of an ACS exam as an optional practice exam for low stakes in preparation for a final exam. Students who took the ACS exam for practice performed somewhat better on their final exam although they were not told their specific areas of difficulty. Also, it was found that weaker students performed as well as stronger students in questions on experimental work and involving visualization. xii Schultz et al.; Technology and Assessment Strategies for Improving Student Learning in Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2016.


13. A large-scale collaboration is described by Schmid, Schultz, Priest, O’Brien, Pyke, Bridgeman, Lim, Southam, Bedford, and Jamie. This work is associated with the implementation of Chemistry Threshold Learning Outcomes (CTLOs) in response to regulatory demands in Australia. Finding a methodology to evaluate assessments required an iterative approach and resulted in rubrics that provide insight into how departments view their own efforts to assess the CTLOs. In particular, these local efforts tend to over emphasize the extent to which assessments measure student achievement related to the CTLOs. By providing a template for deep analysis of assessment materials, the overall goal of improving student learning can be better advanced in parallel with satisfying regulatory requirements. The tool can be applied to any set of learning outcomes. We are grateful to all of the reviewers who took the time to carefully read and review the chapters of this book. We also thank the ACS Examinations Institute for supporting the Pacifichem Symposium. The authors also acknowledge support from the Australian Government’s Office for Learning and Teaching (grant OLT ID14-3652).

Madeleine Schultz Queensland University of Technology Brisbane, Australia [email protected] (e-mail)

Siegbert Schmid The University of Sydney Sydney, Australia [email protected] (e-mail)

Thomas Holme Iowa State University Ames, Iowa, United States [email protected] (e-mail)

xiii Schultz et al.; Technology and Assessment Strategies for Improving Student Learning in Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2016.

Technology and Assessment Strategies for Improving Student

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