Fall 2007 CONFCHEM	Meeting the Challenges of Teaching Chemistry for General Education Students An on-line conference, September - October 2007
	Abstracts	Papers	Instructions	Discussion Archive

 

P5. Offering Introductory Chemistry in a Learning Community versus a Stand-alone Course: Gains, Losses and Extras

M. Rachel Wang and Adriana Bishop

Chemistry Department, Spokane Falls Community College

Abstract

At Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC), up to 350 students enroll in Chem. 100 (Survey of Chemistry) each year for various reasons. As a college-level, fully transferrable laboratory science course, Chem. 100 satisfies a degree requirement of the Associates of Arts and several vocational-technical programs. It also prepares students for more advanced chemistry courses. In the past five years, students at SFCC were offered an option to take Chem. 100 in conjunction with English Composition 101 (or 201, for those with more advanced writing skills) in a learning community (LC). This LC enrolls up to 45 students per section; they attend classes together, led by one instructor from each discipline, working collaboratively. The LC integrates traditional course content in both chemistry and English composition, with an added emphasis on personal and civil responsibilities to the environment.  This report compares the chemistry portion of five LC sections versus traditional stand-alone Chem. 100 sections offered during the same period. Aspects compared include: course format, student profiles and completion rate, assessment strategies, curriculum issues, administrative / instructor issues, and some unexpected extras.

Table of Content (TOC)

Introduction

Background and Rationale

Writing –to – Learn Chemistry

Learning Community (LC) of Chemistry and English Composition

Comparisons of LC and Stand-alone Chem. 100

Course Format Comparison       Table 1

Student Profiles and Pass Rate Comparison Table 2

Curriculum Issues and Assessment Strategies Comparison        Table 3

Administrative and Instructor Issues   Table 4

Some Unexpected Extras                   

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Literature Cited

Introduction

Learning communities (LCs) in various forms have become a widely accepted practice in higher education today (1). The LCs offered at Spokane Falls Community College (SFCC) are similar to the “curricular” LCs described by the Washington Center for Improvement of Undergraduate Education as:“classes that are linked or clustered during an academic term, often around an interdisciplinary theme, and enroll a common cohort of students. …  A learning community employs a variety of approaches … to build community among students, between students and their teachers, and among faculty members and disciplines.” (2)

Both of us have taught Chem. 100 by itself many times for years. In the past five years, we separately offered a LC of Chem. 100 and English Composition with different English instructors. (RW offered it three times, in fall quarters 2002, 2003 and 2004. AB offered it twice, in spring quarters 2006 and 2007.) We will compare and summarize our experiences in this paper. (Back to TOC)

Background and Rationale 

Chem. 100 is the most basic chemistry course offered at SFCC. It is quite popular among students, evidenced by the fact that the two or more sections offered each quarter quickly fill up to capacity soon after registration opens. Students take Chem. 100 for various reasons. Liberal arts majors take it to fulfill a laboratory science requirement. It is also a requirement for both the Fire Officer and the Fire Science Technology programs. Science majors consider Chem. 100 a launching pad or refresher in preparation for more advanced chemistry courses. This five-credit course involves seven hours of lecture and lab time per week.

Writing –to – Learn Chemistry

Our desire to teach Chem. 100 in a LC with English Composition originates from the writing - to- learn concept. Over three decades of educational research and actual practice have shown that writing is an effective learning tool in various disciplines (3,4), including chemistry(5). How exactly does writing help students learn chemistry? J. Kovac and D. W. Sherwood said: “Productive scholars have always known that ‘writing is thinking'; … The best way to clarify thinking is to put early thoughts on paper for someone else to read.” (5)  N. VanOrden pointed out that writing assignments not only “encourage students to think about the chemical concepts”, but are also useful to “find out if the students understand the chemical concepts, show students that chemical concepts can be very practical and help student improve their written communications in chemistry.”(6)  M. M. Cooper concurred that writing assignments “allow students to reflect upon the material, and the reflection process provides a clearer understanding of the subject matter. Writing about chemistry actively involves the student in the learning process - a prerequisite to a successful completion of the course.”  (7)  H. Beall and J. Trimbur summarized the dominant themes of the sixth Annual Conference on Chemical Education in three points “the need to use writing as a way of charting thinking patterns and increasing understanding”, “the use of writing to increase communication between teacher and among students”, and “the desirability of adjusting the balance of chemistry teaching by emphasizing more on writing, and less on lecturing.”  (8)  L. Chapman, originator of Calibrated Peer Review ^TM (CPR), states this in the CPR white paper: “By greatly enhancing the amount of writing that students do, CPR opens new avenues to learning that we educators have not explored. … students can learn to ask the critical questions, to doubt, to probe, to form mental models. But these issues are not just science issues, they hold true for history, sociology, geography, and more; indeed, they cut across our curricula.” (9)

Indeed, the educational community has embraced the fact that writing helps students learn by “exploring ideas and making connections between them.” (10)  This is why most colleges and universities today offer “writing across the curriculum” programs, and many institutions further specify “writing-intensive” courses among graduation requirements. For example, there is a “five credit writing-intensive component” requirement for the Associate of Arts (A.A.) degree at SFCC. Any course, except English Composition, can qualify for the “W” designation if writing assignments (with the revision process as an integral part) account for more than 50% of course grade. One of us (RW) taught a stand-alone section of Chem. 100 with the “W” designation (Chem. 100^W), by designing a variety of writing assignments through online discussion forums, in-class and lab work, essay tests, plus a research paper that involves revisions and peer reviews (11). The class went fairly well, even though no less than 5 students dropped the class immediately after finding out its “writing-intensive” feature. Other chemistry instructors who have incorporated formal writing assignments in their courses also reported similar sentiments of their students (12,13) . (Back to TOC)

Learning Community (LC) of Chemistry and English Composition

It seems to us that offering Chem. 100 in a LC with English Composition is a better way to implement the writing-to-learn concept than a stand-alone Chem. 100^W. On the one hand, we can design writing projects supported by the expertise of an English instructor to help students gain a more thorough understanding of chemistry concepts, and the Chem. 100 in this LC automatically qualifies for the “W” designation. On the other hand, relevant topics in chemistry help students hone writing skills. The English component of the LC includes both Eng. 101 and 201 (Advanced English Composition). Students with writing skills beyond 101 can earn credit for 201 by meeting more extensive and stringent writing criteria.

This LC also offers significant advantages from the students' point of view. Students can satisfy three A.A. degree requirements by completing this LC: five-credits each of “laboratory science” and “communication skills” distributions, plus the five credit “writing-intensive component”.  In addition, the five core practices of LC design: “community, integration, active learning, diversity and reflection, and assessment” (1), promise them an enhanced learning experience. (Back to TOC)

Comparisons of LC and Stand-alone Chem. 100

Course Format Comparison: 

Table 1 lists various aspects of the stand-alone Chem. 100 course format in comparison to that of the LC, with hyperlinked footnotes and three classroom pictures that provide more detail descriptions. In this comparison, we find that the LC scores a major “gain” over the stand-alone: more time-on-task is devoted to chemistry content in the LC than in stand-alone classes.

This gain is scored from two directions. One, more than 5 out of the weekly 9 hours class time in LC are regularly devoted to chemistry content and related activities, as described in the section on  curriculum and assessment strategies and Table 3. In comparison, a stand-alone Chem. 100 generally has 4 hour-long lectures per week. Two, the SFCC English department schedules two portfolio reading / conference weeks for all Eng. 101 classes, one in mid-quarter and one at the end of the quarter. During these weeks, 101 classes are canceled anywhere from two days to the entire week, as composition instructors gather in whole day sessions to evaluate writing portfolios by a common rubric, and afterwards schedule individual conferences to discuss results with their own students. Well, since the LC students have another instructor available to be with them, they gain “chemistry class time” during these two weeks!  

As a result of this gain in the LC setting, we can allow class time for students to “figure things out by themselves,” instead of our usual experience of barely having time to “cover the material” in the stand-alone format. Again, the section on comparing curriculum and assessment strategies provides some concrete examples to support this point.

Table 1 – Course Format Comparison (Back to TOC)

Supplemental Information for Table 1

Figure 1 Stand-alone Chem 100. Lecture in session. (Back to Table 1)

 Figure 2 Lecture room for LC with movable tables.   (Back to Table 1)

Figure 3 LC Students work in groups during class. (Back to Table 1)

Student Profiles and Completion Rate Comparison   (Back to TOC)

Table 2 summarizes student profile data in terms of age, sex, class standing, course completion rate and grades for stand-alone Chem. 100 versus LC. The first major difference is that the LC enrolled 25% more first-year students than the stand-alone; we consider this a “gain”.  One factor contributing to LC's higher percentage of first year students is that many of them enroll in the LC based on counselor recommendations during mandatory advising sessions. (In contrast, second year students register for courses on their own, and many of them register online.  The SFCC online schedule planner does not direct students to look for chemistry courses in a LC. The student must know that the LC exists or be directed to it by an advisor.) The National Academic Advising Association endorses LCs as an “effective first-year intervention” because they create the sense of community beneficial to novice college students (14 ) . In fact, LC is “common practice” at approximately 62% of institutions included in a recent national survey conducted by the Policy Center of the First Year of College (15 ).  In the sense of nurturing first year students, we found that our LC sections with 40% second year and 60% first year students did provide a balanced mix of experience levels that enriched the learning experience. 

The LC strikes a significant “loss” in averaging 12% lower completion rate than that of the stand-alone.  An interpretation for this loss could be that the “innovative” LC curriculum poses a greater challenge to students than the “regular” course work in stand-alone Chem. 100; the latter has well-known expectations, the former varies from year to year. Furthermore, the “active learning” in LC is more time-consuming with all the writing and preparation for seminars, presentations, group work, etc.  This view is evidenced by student comments in course evaluations. Many described the LC as being “more advanced”, “more than ‘Chemistry for Dummies' ”, “serious stuff”, etc., and the LC course load being as if they were taking three courses: Chem. 100, English 101, plus an “environmental science course”, instead of two.

In a second analysis of completion rates, we separated the data from the first- and second-year students within each course format, and found that there is a gap between the two groups of students, with the second- year group achieving higher completion rates than the first year group in both LC and stand-alone Chem. 100. However, the gap between the two groups is statistically significant only in the stand-alone format (80.3% versus 85.2%), but not in the LC format (70.7% versus 73.4%). This indicates that the LC format somehow helped first year students, so that they were able to achieve a similar completion rate as second year students. To verify this interpretation, we looked into completion rate data for a small sub-set of students in the stand-alone format (56 out of 1529) from two sections qualified as “writing-intensive Chem. 100”. We found that the completion rate of this sub-set is lower than the total (75.9% versus 83.5%), and there is a greater gap between first- and second- year groups (64.8% versus 80.0%). This finding indicates that the “writing-intensive” factor, both in the stand-alone or the LC format, may have contributed to lowering completion rate. It also confirms that the LC format is a “gain” over the stand-alone format for first-year students in terms of “closing the gap” between completion rates.

Finally, grade comparisons between stand-alone Chem. 100 and the LC reveal statistically significant differences. The LC has lower average grades in terms of both cumulative college GPA and Chem. 100. Grade data from the sub-set of stand-alone, writing intensive Chem. 100 group are lower than the total stand-alone as well.  The lower LC Chem. 100 grade may be a direct consequence of its higher percentage of “0.0” grades.  The cumulative college GPA data may indicate that students who enrolled in our LC are performing at a lower level “across-the-board” when compared to students who enrolled in stand-alone Chem. 100. Or, it may be that the LC had negatively impacted students' overall GPA. No data is available for us to decipher between these two interpretations. We will begin to track pre-LC and post –LC college GPA data in future LC and stand-alone sections.

Table 2 Student Profile Comparison^†  (Back to TOC)

Supplemental Information for Table 2

Curriculum and Assessment Strategies Comparison   (Back to TOC)

Some striking differences in content delivery and assessment when comparing the LCs to stand-alone classes are outlined in Table 3. First of all, the LC curriculum emphasizes applications of chemistry to a much greater extent than that of the stand-alone. Each of our LC sections more or less took the “Chemistry in Context” (16) approach of establishing chemical principles “on a need-to-know basis within the contextual framework of significant social, political, economic, and ethical issues.” This approach is a “gain” in terms of enhancing student interest and involvement, as the student is first presented with a topic relevant to his or her life and then introduced to the more abstract concepts of Chemistry.  Even though they may still struggle with abstract concepts, the question of “why would I want to know this?” seldom comes up.

However, the LC may be a “loss” in terms of preparing students for advanced chemistry courses, which follow the same format as the stand-alone Chem. 100, albeit much more rigorous. We may point out that the conventional course format of extensive lectures and drilling exercises on basic skills tend to support recall and recognition of concepts, algorithmic understanding and mastery, whereas the LC employs teaching and learning activities that focus more on conceptual understanding and expression.

As to grading policy, the stand-alone Chem. 100 relies heavily on closed-book and timed tests, whereas LC depends on open-book, take-home and in-class group work, such as hands-on learning activity packets (LAP), seminars, projects, presentations, etc. This may be a “gain” for the LC, since the variety of assessment strategies let students demonstrate their knowledge in alternative ways and allow for different learning styles. They alleviate test-phobia, time-anxiety and avoid the practice of ‘cramming' for exams and subsequently forgetting the material as soon as the test is over.  Research projects and presentations, a major part of LC assessment, help prepare students to be life-long learners. Group work prepares them to work as members of a team, a skill they will likely need in their careers.  Furthermore, though lab experience is similar for both stand-alone and LC, lab reports in the stand-alone classes are mostly ‘fill-in the blank' whereas LCs made greater use of formal lab reports.  

Table 3 Content Delivery and Assessment Comparison  (Back to TOC)