Our introductory chemistry sequence is intended to serve all science and engineering majors. We are aware that B.A. and B.S. chemistry majors account for less than five percent of course enrollment in these courses. As a result, the content of the introductory sequence is designed not only to address the needs of students who will continue taking principal courses in chemistry, but also to provide foundations in chemical principles for students in various fields of engineering, as well as biology and the pre-health professional majors. Approximately half of the students enrolled in these courses list either biology or premedicine as their primary major option. For these students, chemistry content forms a critical basis for understanding organismal function at the cellular and biochemical level.
Research also indicates that a significant fraction of the students taking these courses will not persist in a science major. Unlike students who enter universities as social science or humanities majors, nationwide surveys indicate that up to half of the students who matriculate in science majors and go on to receive university degrees will switch into a non-science major track. So, for many of the students in this two-semester sequence, this course may be among the last formal exposures that students will have to the sciences. This indicates that the introductory chemistry sequence does eventually adopt the role of a general education science course for many enrollees.
Like many introductory courses at the university level, the faculty are alarmed at the low level of student engagement in chemistry. One source of evidence for lack of engagement is poor attendance in chemistry lectures, discussion sections, and optional review sessions prior to examinations. Another is the perception of faculty that most students choose to participate in only those learning opportunities that contribute to the course grade. In recent years, fewer than 20 percent of students participated in optional discussion sections associated with these courses, although these sessions are intended to promote understanding of fundamental concepts and develop problem-solving skills. Finally, surveys of students reinforce our impression that they view these courses as academic hurdles and do not consider the content to have high relevance to their future career choices. These observations are all the more troubling because we recognize how central the content in introductory chemistry is for helping students reach a deep understanding of their own major fields.
Many of the initial objectives for the project outlined in the preface were designed, in part, to foster student engagement in these courses. Students were formed into four-member teams which, with a few exceptions, worked together in the laboratory throughout the semester. We also incorporated two additional design features that we felt would foster student connections to the material. The majority of the experiments were structured around a 5-e learning cycle model. This guided inquiry model focuses on fostering learning in the context of problem solving and leaves much control over experimental protocol up to the students. We also incorporated explicit links between chemistry content and the biological sciences into many of the experiments in the new laboratories. Not only did many of the introductions for experiments focus on themes in biochemistry or environmental science, but also the content of many of the experiments was shifted to focus on biologically relevant or explicitly biochemical topics. In-class observations of student interactions showed an increased tendency among student teams to engage in scientific discussions and focus on problem solving issues during the laboratory than were observed in traditional cookbook style laboratories. Janet Bond-Robinson led an extensive study of student perceptions of the team approach to laboratory work, and she found that the average student opinion held that their team had worked extremely well together over the semester.
We were disappointed to learn from focus group studies with students who completed the new experiments that these connections between the chemical content and biology content relevant to their majors failed to foster increased student engagement with the subject matter. This result suggests to us that explicitly identifying the relevance of chemistry content and explaining the scientific and social importance of chemistry concepts is not sufficient to significantly increase student engagement with the material. While the focus group responses provided many positive indications that students preferred the guided inquiry laboratories over traditional cookbook laboratories, only a more extended open-ended research study that acted as the capstone for the second semester laboratory course seemed to dramatically increase student engagement.
What were some of the specific opinions that students expressed about the new laboratory format? During focus groups, students expressed that they enjoyed working in the laboratory and that working in teams was a particularly positive experience. Students expressed a stronger sense of accomplishment in completing the inquiry-based laboratories than they did in working on traditional cookbook style experiments. A four-week capstone water quality laboratory, which provided students with significant freedom in the design and implementation of the experiment, elicited the strongest indications of engagement among the participants. Students identified this capstone experience as the most meaningful activity in the chemistry laboratory. Students did express some frustration at the need for precision in designing and implementing the experiment, but they enjoyed the process of deciding what water sources to examine and what water quality indicators to monitor. One participant suggested that the reason for performing many of the guided inquiry projects earlier in the semester became clear after they completed the water quality study. Students often expressed surprise over the outcomes of their studies. Based on our observations in this study, we believe that providing opportunities for students to take greater responsibility for the design and implementation of investigations in the chemistry laboratory has a far greater chance of fostering student engagement than either incorporating explicit links between course content and themes in their own majors or using guided inquiry models to structure laboratory activities.
Acknowledgements. I thank the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for initial funding and the National Science Foundation for continued funding of this project through their Centers for Excellence in Teacher Preparation program. Many other chemistry faculty, staff, and students contributed to this project, including Janet Bond-Robinson, Cynthia Larive, Robert Carlson, Brian Laird, Alfred Lata, Gary Harris, William Otto, Susan Mason, and Adam Wolfer.
Joseph A. Heppert is a professor of chemistry. He has taught at KU for 18 years. In addition to Introductory Chemistry, he teaches courses in senior and graduate-level inorganic chemistry.