========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 07:03:00 EDT From: to2 Subject: Discussion of Paper 1 begins CHEMCONF '96 New Initiatives in Chemical Education An On-Line Symposium, June 3 to July 19, 1996 Sponsored by the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Education Organized by: Donald Rosenthal, Department of Chemistry, Clarkson University, and Tom O'Haver, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, The University of Maryland at College Park. It is Monday, June 10, 1996. Papers 1 to 5 are now available and may be retrieved from the World Wide Web. (The URL is http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh/ChemConf96.html) >From 8 AM Eastern Daylight Saving Time (EDST) today until 8 AM EDST on Wednesday, June 11 you have an opportunity to discuss Paper 1 - "What is AAAS Project 2061? Why Should Chemists Care?" by Jerry A. Bell and Andrew Ahlgren. 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Donald Rosenthal Symposium Chair and Chair, Committee on Computers in Chemical Education Clarkson University Phone: 315-265-9242 E-mail: ROSEN1@CLVM.CLARKSON.EDU Tom O'Haver Professor of Analytical Chemistry University of Maryland Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry College Park, MD 20742 Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation (301) 405-1831 to2@umail.umd.edu FAX: (301) 314-9121 http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 09:58:26 -0400 From: JBELL Subject: P1-DD/JB-SQ response Dan Dill (Boston Univesity) wrote: Could you describe what you mean by an absolute grading scale? SHORT ANSWER: "Absolute" in this case means the grade depends directly on the % correct, not "on the curve" to give a familiar distribution of A to F grades. LONG ANSWER:We probably erred in using the term "absolute" grading scale and should have used "criterion referenced" -- in distinction to "norm-referenced" (grading on the curve). For the criterion-referenced system, the tester decides, on some basis, that, say, 90% right is an A, 80% right is a B, and so on. If everyone gets 90% right or better, everyone gets an A. So, each student's grade is not affected by how well other students do. ("Criterion- referenced" is a better label because it reminds the reader of the need to choose a criterion, whereas "absolute" may offer false assurance that there is some external, independent criterion.) The difficulty for the instructor is in the "on some basis." In most academic situations, the tester will almost surely have to adjust either (1) the threshold percents or (2) the difficulty of questions, so that there is a plausible distribution of grades -- probably not all A's or all F's. The adjustment, however, occurs over time and with increasing experience, not on a particular test or even during a particular semester. So how well students do will likely affect grades (or, alternatively, how hard one has to work for the same grades), although with a longer feedback delay than in the test-by-test grading on the curve. That is, the criteria will probably be adjusted over time, but will still be the same for all students in the course (and known to them, a priori) at any particular time. Criterion-referenced grading is therefore different from norm-referenced grading chiefly in the heavy demand it puts on the test-maker to estimate consistently the difficulty of new tests. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 10:30:53 -0400 From: JBELL Subject: P1 - DR - SQ Response P1 - DR - SQ - Effect of Recommendations of Project 2061 on Curriculum (from Don Rosenthal, Clarkson College) 1. I do not have access to the ACS 1993 report "Chemistry at the K - 12 Level: An analysis of the chemistry content of the Project 2061 Benchmarks and the Scope and Sequence Content Core" a. What affect would the adoption of the Project 2061 recommendations have on the chemistry content? ANSWER: The major effects on content would be to reduce the amount of stoichiometric calculations and mole manipulations as well as the amount of chemical nomenclature students would be responsible for on exams. There would be an increase in material related to organic and biochemistry, materials science, and real world and applied examples. The Chemistry in the Community, ChemCom, materials more closely parallel both the 2061 and the NAS's National Science Education Standards (NSES) than do traditional inorganic/physical chemical high school and first-year texts. b. Would the College Board Chemistry proficiency examination and the New York State Chemistry Reagent examination have to be changed because topics which are presently covered would be omitted? ANSWER: Almost certainly there would have to be changes in such exams to account for the difference in outlook of the new curricula based on new standards. However, we must be careful to clarify that the standards try to define what ALL students should understand and be able to do in science, not all the science that SOME students (whose goals are clearly in the sciences) should understand. The standards (in their entirety) are a subset of what these latter students might get from a longer exposure to science than everyone else. 2. a. What impact would the Project 2061 recommendations have upon the content of college-level General Chemistry courses? ANSWER: Directly? Almost none. Indirectly, as collegiate instructors begin to address questions of student understanding (as delineated in this paper and the second by George Bodner), the Project 2061 methodolgy and principles can guide the reconstruction of General Chemistry courses. There will not be a single route to such reconstructions, but multiple routes, depending upon local circumstances. b. Would different textbooks be required? ANSWER: Undoubtedly. Some of the directions that new texts would take are implicit in the arguments in papers 1 and 2. In the best of all worlds, they would support an inquiry-based approach that would rely a good deal more on student experimental work and analysis and less on instructor talk. Not everything can be "discovered", but it need not be recited didactically by a lecturer or book either. There are other resources students can access in libraries, through computer-based technologies, and from one another. c. Is anyone presently teaching a college-level course which complies with the Project 2061 recommendations? If so, what is the syllabus for such a course? ANSWER: Not that we are aware of, although experiments along the lines we have discussed are going on here and there and are reported at ACS Meetings, through the Journal of Chemical Education, and so on. We would not expect a collegiate level course to follow the 2061 guidelines, but to be developed using the 2061 principles that stress understanding, not coverage. The largest initial changes will probably be in the way that learning is assessed. The results of such studies will be used to develop other changes. ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 09:11:00 -0700 From: Jaqueline E Madison Subject: Paper 1 I have a question to toss out. Do you really believe AAAS Project 2061 is to have teachers teach less? If that is the case, I'm dis- appointed. I've read it and my impression is that more students would learn science and may help to increase the numbers in the profession. I would be interested in hearing from others. J. Madison, Battelle PNNL ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:27:30 -0600 From: "John W. Moore" Subject: Re: P1-DD/JB-SQ response Jerry and others, FYI, I have been using an absolute scale for the past four or five years with good success, and most people teaching general chem here in Madison are doing the same. If you are going to encourage cooperation and group work, this is a necessity. I post grades after each exam so that students know how they are doing in all aspects of the course. This may be illegal, given right to privacy act, but students demand it. However, I always have to adjust my expectations down during the semester or at the end. This bothers me a bit, but I don't think it is worse than changing the curve on an exam to generate a reasonable number of As. John >Dan Dill (Boston Univesity) wrote: Could you describe what you mean by an >absolute grading scale? > >SHORT ANSWER: "Absolute" in this case means the grade depends directly on the % > >correct, not "on the curve" to give a familiar distribution of A to F grades. > >LONG ANSWER:We probably erred in using the term "absolute" grading scale and >should have used "criterion referenced" -- in distinction to "norm-referenced" >(grading on the curve). For the criterion-referenced system, the tester >decides, on some basis, that, say, 90% right is an A, 80% right is a B, and so >on. If everyone gets 90% right or better, everyone gets an A. So, each >student's grade is not affected by how well other students do. ("Criterion- >referenced" is a better label because it reminds the reader of the need to >choose a criterion, whereas "absolute" may offer false assurance that there is >some external, independent criterion.) > >The difficulty for the instructor is in the "on some basis." In most academic >situations, the tester will almost surely have to adjust either (1) the >threshold percents or (2) the difficulty of questions, so that there is a >plausible distribution of grades -- probably not all A's or all F's. The >adjustment, however, occurs over time and with increasing experience, not on a >particular test or even during a particular semester. So how well students do >will likely affect grades (or, alternatively, how hard one has to work for the >same grades), although with a longer feedback delay than in the test-by-test >grading on the curve. That is, the criteria will probably be adjusted over >time, but will still be the same for all students in the course (and known to >them, a priori) at any particular time. Criterion-referenced grading is >therefore different from norm-referenced grading chiefly in the heavy demand it >puts on the test-maker to estimate consistently the difficulty of new tests. > > John W. Moore Professor of Chemistry University of Wisconsin-Madison 1101 University Avenue Madison, WI 53706 Phone: 608-262-5154 FAX: 608-265-8094 Email: JWMoore@macc.wisc.edu World Wide Web: http://www.chem.wisc.edu/people/faculty/moore.html ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 12:44:34 -0400 From: "Jeff Davis (CHE)" Subject: Paper#1 As usual Jerry has hit the nail squarely on the head. The difficulty students in General Chemistry have with anything but memorization and formula-solving is legendary. Unfortunately this extends into just about every kind of course. For several years I have been teaching a course I designed for Liberal Arts students. Most of the texts that might be suitable I found to be compilations of either chemical facts of an applied sort or chemical principles and procedures often inclusive of but much condensed from General Chemistry texts. A couple of years ago I began using Chemistry in Context from ACS. There is an admirable effort there to organize issues in which chemical knowledge is important and one could say that the discussion of these issues is oriented effectively toward illustrating that a variety of kinds of information are available, not always consistent, and other kinds of information are still needed. One can apply the "scientific method" using this information, or lack thereof, to show how science works. Unfortunately, the science itself is simply introduced in a "here it is" approach. The actual science now becomes descriptive with minimal chance for the student to see where the concepts were developed, how they relate to concrete experiences, etc. So again the problem is that students don't see chemistry as a science because they don't "do" any science. Despite the fact that every textbook contains far more topics and detail than any human being could ever use in a course, there still obviously is a question as to what should be expected from a course like General Chemistry or Organic Chemistry. In Florida, for example, we have many transfer students that go from 2YCs to 4YCs and between the latter. I have always felt that if a student truly understands the underlying concepts and processes in an area he should be able to delve into textbooks and other literature to bring himself up to speed once he finds out what he is supposed to understand going in to a new course. The question is, can an instructor articulate what the expectations are for beginning his particular course beyond the simple listing of prerequisite courses. Can a faculty decide what are the key things that are expected as a result of taking a year of General Chemistry or a year of Organic Chemistry. It appears not, but it seems to me that we have to move in this direction if students are going to be instructed in such a way that they can apply concepts intelligently to both real world happenings and the manipulations they are taught to do in our courses. Jeff Davis Prof. and Chair Univ. of South Florida ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 15:15:51 -0400 From: Brian Tissue Subject: P1 - BT - discussion of reduced course coverage I fully agree that chemistry courses should focus more on microscopic concepts and macroscopic relevance, and less on algorithmic problem solving. However, I think there is one major disadvantage of doing so by reducing topic coverage. Continuing with the analogy from the paper of a mind as paths in a forest, broad coverage produces many paths. When students or graduates encounter new material later in their careers, they have relevant paths, although faint, to help them effectively construct new knowledge and understanding. I don't think students have to completely understand every topic at the end of a course for coverage of the topics to have been useful. It would be nice if they at least had a clue, i.e., a faint path. Does anyone know of any studies of the knowledge and understanding that chemistry graduates have after working for some period of time after graduation? Determining a reasonable coverage and depth in intro chemistry almost depends on predicting the students' future exposure to chemical concepts. Chemistry majors will have many of the topics reinforced in subsequent courses, allowing coverage of more topics in less depth. Many non-majors won't take another chemistry course, and whatever understanding or misunderstanding of chemical concepts they possess when they leave intro chem might persist for a long time. Brian *************************************************************** Prof. Brian M. Tissue phone: (540) 231-3786 Department of Chemistry FAX: (540) 231-3255 Virginia Tech e-mail: tissue@vt.edu Blacksburg, VA 24061-0212 http://www.chem.vt.edu/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 18:22:59 -0400 From: James Herron Subject: Re: P1-DD/JB-SQ response In-Reply-To: <26061011243171@vms2.macc.wisc.edu> A short follow-up to John Moore's comments: On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, John W. Moore wrote: > Jerry and others, > > FYI, I have been using an absolute scale for the past four or five years > with good success . . . > > However, I always have to adjust my expectations down during the semester or > at the end. . . > I have used a grading pattern similar to John's and have adjusted on this basis: Total points in the course (quizzes, hour exams, labs, final, etc) is 1000 and grades are based on %s of that. However, I make two assumptions: a) Nobody, including me, could earn 1000 points because of measurement errors (misread exam question, grader doesn't like the way I format my lab report, etc.) and b) somebody in the class will acquire as many points as it is humanly possible to earn. [In classes of 100 or more, I feel reasonably comfortable with these assumptions, and there is always somebody with a score of 930-980.] I then apply my percentages to this top score to get the grade cuts. This is NOT a true criterion-referenced grading system, which requires a different REPORTING system as well, but it allows the possibility of everyone earning high grades if they perform well on the assigned tasks. J. Dudley Herron, Chair Department of Physical Sciences 123 Lappin Hall Morehead State University Morehead, KY 40351-1689 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 18:55:45 -0400 From: James Herron Subject: Re: P1 - BT - discussion of reduced course coverage In-Reply-To: <199606101915.PAA14912@sable.cc.vt.edu> I had planned to respond to Jerry's paper but reading comments made by others leads me to believe that the important issues are already being addressed and I can just add my two cents worth! On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Brian Tissue wrote: > I fully agree that chemistry courses should focus more on microscopic > concepts and macroscopic relevance, and less on algorithmic problem solving. > However, I think there is one major disadvantage of doing so by reducing > topic coverage. Continuing with the analogy from the paper of a mind as > paths in a forest, broad coverage produces many paths. When students or > graduates encounter new material later in their careers, they have relevant > paths, although faint, to help them effectively construct new knowledge and > understanding. . . . > There is certainly merit to this argument, and it should not be dismissed lightly. I suspect that we need to think about content in the same way that Frank Martin thought about it at Purdue many years ago. He divided content into what he called "minimum essentials" and "all the rest" (my label, not his). He reasoned that there are many ideas that will be so important in subsequent courses and any other place chemistry is applied that one should ensure that those ideas are thoroughly mastered, and a student could not pass his course unless they scored at least 80% on such "minimum essentials." But Martin also felt that there are hundreds of topics in chemistry that students should know a little about if time could be found to expose students to them. Students were tested over these less "essential" (but perhaps more interesting) topics, but the depth of understanding required was lower. I have argued for many years that we could reduce content in the introductory course a great deal by focusing on more general concepts using a single example (or very limited number) of subordinate concepts. For example, beginning students have considerable difficulty with the general concept of concentration (probably because of weak proportional reasoning) and by introducing molarity, molality, mass percent, volume percent, parts per million, and all of the other expressions of concentration, we complicate things to the point that none of the terms (or the more general concept, concentration) is sensible. With insufficient time to sort out the relationship inherent in any concen- tration term, students resort to rote memory in hopes of passing the exam. Similarly, after a student acquires a sound understanding of any one concept of acids and bases, one of the others can be developed from it. However, when the introductory course introduces Arrhenius, Bronsted-Lowry, and Lewis acids in a single chapter before the student has a chance to consolidate his/her ideas about any one, confusion results. [This issue is discussed in more detail in The Chemistry Classroom, available from ACS Books.] J. Dudley Herron, Chair Department of Physical Sciences 123 Lappin Hall Morehead State University Morehead, KY 40351-1689 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 19:40:56 -0400 From: George Long Subject: p1.comment.GRL.what should we teach in gen chem > Can a faculty decide what are the key things that are expected >as a result of taking a year of General Chemistry or a year of Organic >Chemistry. It appears not, but it seems to me that we have to move in >this direction if students are going to be instructed in such a way that >they can apply concepts intelligently to both real world happenings and >the manipulations they are taught to do in our courses. > >Jeff Davis >Prof. and Chair >Univ. of South Florida > This last paragraph highlights a criticism I have of this paper. While on one hand it is stated that (from paper 1)> Concepts are learned best when they are >encountered in a variety of contexts and expressed in a variety of ways, for that ensures that there are more opportunities for them to become imbedded in a student's knowledge system" [AAAS, 1989, p. 198].>> We continue to try to define the optimal curriculum. If the statement above is true (and I think it is), then the optimal curriculum is different for each individual. There should be no such thing as an optimal curriculum, and no right answer to the question - what should we teach in general chemistry. The problem faculty have is that our knowledge of the basic concepts is in place, and so appears to us to have a a definite construction. However, to use an analogy from physics, our path to understanding chemistry was chaotic (despite the best efforts of our professors) and cannot be retraced - the process of aquiring knowledge is not commutative. Thus I would argue that the structure of chemical concepts we (as experts) have created for ourselves does not necessarily represent a good pathway for learning those concepts. **************************************************************************** George R Long, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry Indiana University of Pennsylvania Indiana, PA 15705 grlong@grove.iup.edu 412-357-2575 Our lives are merely trees of possibilities - Marc Bolan **************************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 19:56:39 -0400 From: Mary Swift Subject: p1-mls-response Starting out this conference with a paper that challenges the "traditionalist's" way of thinking about chemical education was daring! Congratulations! The tyranny of the curriculum may be measured in part by the weight of the textbooks we use to teach chemistry. These tomes obviously cannot be 'covered' in one semester or even two, so each of us makes choices [already] about what is 'important' , what we will cover, how we will cover it, etc. Bell and Ahlgren have I think set a frame work for others to consider in making future such choices. The explosion of knowledge simply cannot be accommodated by cramming more into the semester, we must work toward to empowering our students in this environment. In some way, by some mechanism the students need to develop into autonomous learners, after all that is what we are as professionals. Several of the examples cited use techniques fairly well established to aid students as they progress in their intellectual development. These are further reinforced when the assessment tool does goes beyond simple recall or algorithmic problem solving. Changing our ideas of assessment will be hard work even for those committed to such an endeavor. I suggest taking a look at Bloom's Taxonomy (B.Bloom, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook 1. the Cognitive Domain Longman Inc. New York 1956). Another reference on the tradeoff between content and critical thinking is Nelson, Craig in Enhancing Critical Thinking in the Sciences edited by Crow and published by Society for College Science Teachers Washington DC 1989 pp17-27. the fights over the preceived trade offs have been and will continue to be monumental, but there is simply too much content and something has to give I suggest we start thinking about this idea of autonomous learning and giving students practice in this early and often. Some of you may be familiar with the term constructivism as used by our colleagues in liberal arts and the modern language association. Quite clearly I thing Bell and Ahlgren are using this as a metaphor for one model of how students may be trying to make sense of their studies. See the paper by Bodner (j chem ed 1986, vol 63, pp 873-878 for more on this. Mary Mary L. Swift Voice: 202-806-6289 Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Fax : 202-806-5784 College of Medicine Howard University E-mail: mswift@umd5.umd.edu Washington DC 20059-0001 ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 20:48:55 -0400 From: "Richard O. Pendarvis" Subject: Re: P1-DD/JB-SQ response On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, John W. Moore wrote: > Jerry and others, > > FYI, I have been using an absolute scale for the past four or five years > with good success, and most people teaching general chem here in Madison are > doing the same. At my school, we have only 2 chemistry faculty. I have graded with an "absolute" grading scale for 8 years. My collegue has used curved grades for the last 17 years. I personally feel that grading with a "curve" assumes certain things about the distribution of student abilities which are generally not valid in a small population at an institution like mine. - - ____ | | _ | | Organic Chemistry / \ |_| | | || CAI Programming / \ | | / \ || Pizza / \ / \ | | _||_ Star Trek (_________) (_____) |______| _/____\_ Doberman Pinschers --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Richard Pendarvis, Ph.D. P.O. Box 1388 | | Associate Professor of Chemistry Ocala, FL 32608 | | Central Florida Community College EMAIL: afn02809@freenet.ufl.edu | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 21:22:02 -0400 From: "Richard O. Pendarvis" Subject: P1 - Prj 2061 and Educational Reform in General In-Reply-To: <01I5QLO7P6Z099DGDW@pnl.gov> On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, Jaqueline E Madison wrote: > I have a question to toss out. Do you really believe AAAS Project > 2061 is to have teachers teach less? If that is the case, I'm dis- > appointed. I've read it and my impression is that more students would > learn science and may help to increase the numbers in the profession. > > I would be interested in hearing from others. > > J. Madison, Battelle PNNL There are a number of things which are disturbing about the nature of educational reform and our social system in general. In a book called "Megatrends", J. Nesbitt articulated some thoughts that many of us have pondered about the way change occurs in our civilization. He said something to the effect that 'Trends {real change} begin at the bottom of our society and work upwards. Fads start at the top and work down.' It seems that social organizations continue to try to bring about change from the top and thus end up creating fads instead of change. This appears to be true in government, religion, and even education. Although I have only been in education for 8 years, I have seen a number of these well intentioned educational reform ideas pass by like hoola hoops and yo-yos. If Project 2061 is to be successful, it must operate with a different paradigm. - - ____ | | _ | | Organic Chemistry / \ |_| | | || CAI Programming / \ | | / \ || Pizza / \ / \ | | _||_ Star Trek (_________) (_____) |______| _/____\_ Doberman Pinschers --------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Richard Pendarvis, Ph.D. P.O. Box 1388 | | Associate Professor of Chemistry Ocala, FL 32608 | | Central Florida Community College EMAIL: afn02809@freenet.ufl.edu | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 22:49:10 -500 Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Christopher T. Bailey" Organization: Wells College Subject: Re: P1-DD/JB-SQ response Continuing with the discussion of absolute scale grading as previously posted by John Moore and James Herron. I grade in a manner very similar to James Herron---an absolute scale with some slight ameliorative curving at the end of the semester. I have found that one unexpected bonus to grading this way (where assignments are worth *points* and only the final grade has a letter) is that very few of my students become overly obsessed with grades. Some students do come to me early in the semester worried because they "only" got a "B" on a particular assignment. However, when I explain to them that they did not get a "B", but *did* get 16 points towards a possible 850 points for the semester, they start looking at the big picture and begin to worry less and less about scores on individual assignments. ******************************************************* Christopher T. Bailey CBAILEY@WELLS.EDU Associate Professor of Chemistry Chair, Biological & Chemical Sciences Major Program Wells College Aurora, New York 13026 315-364-3286 http://www.wells.edu ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 23:44:03 -0500 From: Theresa Julia Zielinski Subject: P1, TJZ,D, More is less etc. (Long message) Dear Colleagues, I too have been advocating less content coverage to promote more effective learning for a few years now. It is impossible to "cover" let alone have students achieve a degree of mastery in the large variety of topics that most courses present. I do not believe that a thin little used path in the brain will have any lasting benefit for the student. In fact all the concern with coverage gives the teacher and the student a false sense of accomplishment and the illusion of learning equivalent to the unread coffee table volume. Deeper understanding comes with reflection. The ability to use concepts comes from practice with the concepts in a variety of situations - not just in a homework set. Learning difficult topics requires time. In light of this I think that a careful full development of fewer topics not only permits a level of mastery in them but also provides the students with the learning and metacognative skills that permit them to be independent learners. In this way they can learn what they need to know whenever they need to know it. My responsibility as a teacher is to create for students the opportunity to do more than record in a notebook a carefully constructed and filtered set of notes from my labors. They must build their own understanding and take possession of their own learning as I did and still do for myself. My student write their own notes for each other actively in class and during homework sessions. For this reason I embrace the ideas presented in the paper by Bell and Ahlgren. I have a few comments that I would like to add to the discussion before I leave town for two days without a computer. First: I think that it is important to promote cooperative learning among our students. There is too much competition for grades and much of it is due to faculty test design and evaluation from early grades through graduate school. The whole concept of a curve is repugnant to me. I think it may also be unethical. How can a system that predetermines that a certain percent of students must get an F be otherwise? What does this do to the moral of students? What image does this portray of Science? It seems to me that it would be difficult to put students in "competition" with the content not each other when most faculty were raised on and many continue to practice competition in their careers or hide the cooperative nature of their work. The uniform adjustment of grades by sliding the requirements for letter grades is not a curve. However, this approach must be used with caution as it can lull students into believing that this will always happen and then they will not perform to their optimum. Better would be a closer match between expectations and outcomes from instruction. To do this I think it is necessary to give students clear learning objectives for each unit of instruction. Second: The fact that most of our students in the first year have not learned to visualize models of atoms is not surprising. Students entering the first year chemistry course are not usually ready to do this as they are still for the most part still at the concrete stage of intellectual development. See Herron, J.Chem.Ed. vol 52, p 146, 1975. Also see Finster, J.Chem.Ed. vol66, p659, 1989 and vol68, p 753, 1991. Visualization and abstraction may just be beyond their skill level and so they memorize to get by but don't have a grasp of the underlying concepts. Furthermore they are given the illusion of know something when really they don't. No wonder people are fooled by clever advertising campaigns and pseudo science claims especially with respect to risks and benefits and health claims. The situation persists into pchem where the inability to visualize makes the mathematics used so much magic for the majority of students. How much time is wasted because we must teach mathematical visualization instead of the chemistry insights that the math permits. We lose the forest, the trees, and the paths in this scenario. I have students who can't compute an equilibrium constant after completing general chemistry and quantitative analysis sources. So much for those paths that are little used. Sure the material was covered and these students passed the exams on this material most with high scores. Third: I too was impressed with the study done by Phelps. It struck a chord with me as I saw my students represented in her descriptions. The difficulties that science majors have in speaking up in class I think is more than their "hiding behind the numbers." Their behavior is adequately understood with in the Perry model of intellectual development. Most of the students in a first year course are Dualists. Plug and Chug is normal for them. Questioning the authority is not part of their behavior profile. With careful design of our curriculum we can maintain this low level of intellectual development right up to graduation day. Non- science majors from the humanities don't usually have this problem. It is part of their behavior pattern to challenge and assess the written and spoken word. They are usually ahead of science majors in this type of development. Forth: With respect to content. I still wonder how some teachers can persist at equating covering content with student learning or effective teaching. Many would say they don't but current practice shows that they do. It is what students in science expect - lectures with entertainment. They even prefer dull lectures to work hard active learning situations. After all they are paying you to lecture aren't they. Students for the most part, especially the younger ones and those on lower rungs of the development schemes, are not critical thinkers. They have not realized that the emperor has no clothes , i.e.- nothing is learned until one takes the material and wrestles with it and builds it into ones own intellectual frame works. Faculty who do try to promote critical thinking and active learning in the classroom are often subjected to lower evaluations. This is especially hard on the younger untenured members of the professoriat. It is exasperated by older faculty who insist that nothing be changed in the methods used in the classroom. In conclusion I think that instruction on learning how to learn needs to be embedded into the chemistry curriculum along with technology. The best way to do this is to model it ourselves and to incorporate reflection promoting activities in class. This methodology means a switch to process learning with context rich materials. "Covering less" means critically thinking about the content of our courses. It also means trusting that our students, after they finish our courses, will be able to continue learning in the discipline without our supervision. Our trust will be well founded if we give students the learning tools to use to stand on their own in a rapidly changing technological environment. Theresa Z. Theresa Julia Zielinski, Ph.D. Chemistry Department Niagara University, Niagara University NY 14109 tjz@niagara.edu and Visiting Professor of Chemistry University of Wisconsin - Madison 1101 University Avenue Madison WI 53706-1396 theresaz@chem.wisc.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 07:03:00 EDT From: to2 Subject: Discussion archives now available Dear ChemConfers: An archive of the short questions submitted last week is now available in plain text from from the ChemConf Home Page. Click on the link labeled "Short Questions for Papers 1 to 5" to access. An archive of the first day of discussion of Paper 1 are also available. Click on the link labeled "Discussion of Paper 1". I will update these discussion archives daily. The ChemConf Home Page is located at: http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/FacRes/ChemConference/ChemConf96/Home.html (shortcut: http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh/ChemConf96.html) Tom ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom O'Haver Professor of Analytical Chemistry University of Maryland Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry College Park, MD 20742 Maryland Collaborative for Teacher Preparation (301) 405-1831 to2@umail.umd.edu FAX: (301) 314-9121 http://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 09:17:54 -0400 From: JBELL Subject: Madison comment--response I have a question to toss out. Do you really believe AAAS Project 2061 is to have teachers teach less? If that is the case, I'm dis- appointed. I've read it and my impression is that more students would learn science and may help to increase the numbers in the profession. I would be interested in hearing from others. J. Madison, Battelle PNNL RESPONSE (form Bell and Ahlgren): Students learn very little chemistry now and understand less. (Those who doubt this are encouraged to give their seniors (or entering graduate students) the freshman chemistry final--and, better yet, interview the students about their answers.) Project 2061 wants students to _understand_ more, which will increase their satisfaction with the subject, how much they eventually learn, and their likelihood of entering the field. This understanding can be achieved by cutting what is fruitlessly _attempted_ to be taught now. Other improvements to instruction, as represented in the other papers, will no doubt help, but will hardly have a chance in the current glut of attempted instruction. Does this mean that teachers do less teaching? Surely not, since facilitating student understanding is much harder than simply didactic exposition. Do they attempt fewer topics (subtopics and sub- subtopics)? Yes. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 09:45:34 -0400 From: JBELL Subject: "Absolute" grading--Moore, Herron, Bailey Moore, Herron and Bailey have all suggested versions of "absolute" grading systems that reinforce our suggestion in paper #1. Here are two more. Dudley Herschbach (reported in Tobias, "They're Not Dumb, They're Different", page 60) uses the "resurrection points" system. Points lost on an hour exam for errors on a particular kind of problem (say Hess' Law) can be regained by successful execution of a problem of the same kind on the final exam, so no points are irretrievably lost. For about a decade I have used a much simpler version of Herschbach's system that was, I am told, used many years ago by William Doering in organic chemistry. In this system, any hour examination score (percent) is replaced by the final examination score (percent), so that the student who learns from her mistakes and does better on the final (cumulative) exam has her learning accounted for. Over the years, I have found that this system does not result in enormous jumps in scores for students (with rare exceptions--far under one percent), but is an incentive for learning from the hour exams (instead of filing them someplace irretrievable). Some students increase their grades by a half point or so (B to B+, e.g.) and fewer students fail abysmally (although some still do fail, of course). This system requires less extensive record- keeping than Herschbach's, but is not as "personalized" and does not recognize each individual's strengths and weaknesses. J.A. Bell, AAAS ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:13:25 -0400 From: Jack Martin Miller Subject: Re: P1-DD/JB-SQ response >On Mon, 10 Jun 1996, John W. Moore wrote: > >> Jerry and others, >> >> FYI, I have been using an absolute scale for the past four or five years >> with good success, and most people teaching general chem here in Madison are >> doing the same. Richard Pendarvis replied, >At my school, we have only 2 chemistry faculty. I have graded with an >"absolute" grading scale for 8 years. My collegue has used curved grades >for the last 17 years. I personally feel that grading with a "curve" >assumes certain things about the distribution of student abilities which are >generally not valid in a small population at an institution like mine. > This is very true, but of large classes as well --- marking on acurve assumes a bell curve but large chemistry classes, especially those with a quantitative portion of an exam show a biomodal distribution. Jack Martin Miller Professor of Chemistry Adjunct Professor of Computer Science Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, L2S 3A1. Phone (905) 688 5550, ext 3402 FAX (905) 682 9020 e-mail jmiller@sandcastle.cosc.brocku.ca http://chemiris.labs.brocku.ca/staff/miller/miller.html ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:03:39 EST From: George Bodner Subject: Grading Systems Much has been written about grading scales in the correspondence over the last few days. I have had trouble using an absolute grading scale for one of the reasons John Moore states -- the need to "adjust" this scale at the end of the semester, often by lowering expectations. My problem is simple: In spite of more than 20 years of writing exams, I still don't know -- before the exam is given -- how easy or how difficult it is. Thus, I have trouble writing exams that would give me the performance necessary to use an absolute scale. I also have a great deal of concern about changing a grading scale that has been announced to the students, because we have talked to a number of students over the years who approached the task of studying for final exams based on their expectations of a grade. (They had reasonable expectations of a B, for example, but knew that they could not possibly get an A -- based on the announced scale -- and so they devoted their time to calculus or physics, only to find out, after the semester was over, that they COULD have gotten the A in chemistry because the scale was changed.) I am also troubled with the notion of grading on a "curve." This assumes that there is a more or less regular distribution of student performance in the class, which we know is often not the case. (Last semester, for example, I taught the second half of a course for engineers who were identified as being slightly brighter than the average of our engineering population. They did remarkably well -- 32%A, 35%B, 2%F) Grading on a curve also assumes that the distribution of students' abilities from year to year in a course is similar, which we have reason to suspect is not the case. For many years, we have been using a criterion referenced system at Purdue. I have used this approach in both general and organic chemistry, with a remarkably amount of success. Because both of these courses have computer-managed grade recording systems, we get a computer print-out at the end of the semester that tells us everything about the students' performance on quizzes, exams, labs, etc. We then look at the distribution of scores, and find the 98th or 99th percentile. (Not the top student, whose score is often anomalously high, but the students near the top of the grade distribution.) Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the 98th or 99th percentile has a score of 900 points. (It doesn't matter whether this is out of 1000 possible points, or 1200, or even 1500, but it is often out of 1000.) We assign an A to any student whose total score is more than 90% of this standard. (In a bad semester, this has been as low as 5% of the total population; in a good semester, like last semester, it has gotten up to 30% or more.) We assign a B to any student whose total score is more than 80% but less than 90% of the 98th-99th percentile. This technique works reasonably well for C's (about 70%), but often has been gently adjusted for D's (I have seen it fall to as low as 55%). There are several advantages to this approach. At any point in the course, I can run a "curve" and tell the students exactly how well they are doing. (The curve is based on their performance on the exams, quizzes, labs, etc., rather than just the exam.) If I write an unusually difficult exam, or an unusually easy exam, they don't either suffer or benefit from my mistake. The standards from semester to semester -- or from year to year -- are consistent. And, perhaps most importantly, the course is no longer one in which the students compete with each other. This approach is therefore ideally suited for use with cooperative, or better yet, collaborative learning. When this system is transferred from one course to another, or from general chemistry to organic chemistry, the dividing lines for the A's, B'S, C's, and so on, might have to be adjusted. But, once they are set, reasonably consistent standards can be achieved from year to year. George Bodner Purdue University gmbodner@vm.cc.purdue.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 10:34:26 EST From: George Bodner Brian Tissue raised an important point when he noted that we are preparing students who will take many different paths. His goal of preparing them for their experiences with new material later in their careers, or Jeff Davis' goal of preparing them to delve into textbooks or the literature to bring themselves up to speed when they go into a new course, brought to my mind a metaphor out of research on problem solving. I remember reading an article that talked about heuristics (or strategies) for solving problems. The author noted that there are "strong" heuristics and "weak" heuristics. The paper then went on to suggest that "strong" heuristics are intrinsically weak; "weak" heuristics CAN BE strong. At first glance, that appears to be nonsense. But let's parse the sentence, to see if we can understand the author's argument. A "strong" heuristic is one that is very likely to lead to an answer -- hopefully, the correct answer. It is therefore relative weak in the sense that it is very specific to a particular kind of problem; it can't be transferred easily to problems outside of its particular domain of relevance. A heuristic can be "weak" because it doesn't necessarily lead directly to the answer and yet simultaneously strong because it can be applied to many different problems in many different contexts. If I was teaching a general chemistry course for biology majors, I know exactly what I should do. When I teach a course -- like last semester -- that is exclusively for engineers, I know what to do. But the problem that most of us face is that we have both populations in our course at the same time. At many institutions, the problem is even more severe because there are ENG students (from English) sitting next to ENG students (from Engineering). When we design general chemistry courses, perhaps our goal should be developing "weak" heuristics that can be used as a general guide for approaching problems in almost any context, rather than "strong" heuristics that lead to the answer in a narrow content domain. If this goal is achieved, we won't be teaching algorithmic problem solving techniques, but we might be helping them develop true problem-solving skills. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 11:41:38 -0500 From: "Dr. David Ritter" Subject: Re: P1, TJZ,D, More is less etc. (Long message) Theresa Julia Zielinski, Ph.D wrote: >Dear Colleagues, > >I too have been advocating less content coverage to promote more effective >learning for a few years now. It is impossible to "cover" let alone have >students achieve a degree of mastery in the large variety of topics that most >courses present. Deeper >understanding comes with reflection. The ability to use concepts comes from >practice with the concepts in a variety of situations - not just in a homework >set. Learning difficult topics requires time. In light of this I think that a careful full development of fewer topics not >only permits a level of mastery in them but also provides the students with >the learning and metacognative skills that permit them to be independent >learners. I have been teaching a course in which we examine a subset of the general chemistry topics in great detail. In fact, on the first day, I tell my students that if they really mastered their general chemistry course that I will guarantee them an A in this course. We carefully develop a few topics from general chemistry, and construct pathways between the various topics. Oh, BTW we call this course physical chemistry :-) >...There is too much competition for grades and much of it is due to >faculty test design and evaluation from early grades through graduate >school. The whole concept of a curve is repugnant to me. I think it may also >be unethical. How can a system that predetermines that a certain percent of >students must get an F be otherwise? What does this do to the moral of >students? What image does this portray of Science? It seems to me that it >would be difficult to put students in "competition" with the content not each >other when most faculty were raised on and many continue to practice >competition in their careers or hide the cooperative nature of their work... I also grade this course on an "absolute scale" and try to encourage cooperation between the students. However, they soon realize that they are indeed in competition with mastery of the material itself. We must keep in mind that this is a competetive society. For example, a competition for a predetermined finite number of jobs may indeed place the same individuals into an analogous situation. While I see only a small number that may not be representative of the whole country, my students seem to be very conscious of this. David Ritter Department of Chemistry Southeast Missouri State University c617scc@semovm.semo.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 11:54:59 -0800 From: Walter Volland Organization: Bellevue Community College Subject: Paper #1: What are Students Lerning? To ask the question, "What are students learning?" is misleading. The real question should be, "What are we trying to teach?". It seems overly optimistic to expect the chemistry classes in high school and college to do someting the rest of the eductional system is isn't. I agree it is better to have less content and more understanding. I do not feel it must be an either or proposition. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 15:59:36 EST From: George Bodner Walter Volland raised the question: "Do you believe students use our models and representations to duplicate our explanations in the same way they use problem algorithms?" I am convinced that they TRY to use our representations to duplicate our explanations. I am equally convinced from my experience with organic chemistry they the representations they use have very different meanings for them then they do for us. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 16:23:56 -0500 From: "Dr. David Ritter" Subject: Re: P1, TJZ,D, More is less etc. - Theresa Julia Zielinski, Ph.D wrote: >Dear Colleagues, > >I too have been advocating less content coverage to promote more effective >learning for a few years now. It is impossible to "cover" let alone have >students achieve a degree of mastery in the large variety of topics that most >courses present. Deeper >understanding comes with reflection. The ability to use concepts comes from >practice with the concepts in a variety of situations - not just in a homework >set. Learning difficult topics requires time. In light of this I think that a careful full development of fewer topics not >only permits a level of mastery in them but also provides the students with >the learning and metacognative skills that permit them to be independent >learners. I have been teaching a course in which we examine a subset of the general chemistry topics in great detail. In fact, on the first day, I tell my students that if they really mastered their general chemistry course that I will guarantee them an A in this course. We carefully develop a few topics from general chemistry, and construct pathways between the various topics. Oh, BTW we call this course physical chemistry :-) >...There is too much competition for grades and much of it is due to >faculty test design and evaluation from early grades through graduate >school. The whole concept of a curve is repugnant to me. I think it may also >be unethical. How can a system that predetermines that a certain percent of >students must get an F be otherwise? What does this do to the moral of >students? What image does this portray of Science? It seems to me that it >would be difficult to put students in "competition" with the content not each >other when most faculty were raised on and many continue to practice >competition in their careers or hide the cooperative nature of their work... I also grade this course on an "absolute scale" and try to encourage cooperation between the students. However, they soon realize that they are indeed in competition with mastery of the material itself. We must keep in mind that this is a competetive society. For example, a competition for a predetermined finite number of jobs may indeed place the same individuals into an analogous situation. While I see only a small number that may not be representative of the whole country, my students seem to be very conscious of this. David Ritter Department of Chemistry Southeast Missouri State University c617scc@semovm.semo.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 03:15:33 +0000 Comments: Authenticated sender is From: "Loretta L. Jones" Subject: Re: P1, TJZ,D, More is less etc. I have seen a course in physics called "The Great Ideas of Physics," which focuses on six important ideas in order to build understanding among non-science majors. Does anyone know of a similar course in chemistry, whether introductory or advanced? David Ritter's physical chem course may approach this idea. I wonder how many others teach courses in this way, even courses offered under a traditional umbrella? Loretta L. Jones Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of Northern Colorado Greeley, CO 80639 Voice 1-970-351-1443 FAX 1-970-351-1269 lljones@bentley.univnorthco.edu ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 11 Jun 1996 17:00:27 EST From: George Bodner Re: Loretta Jones question I have taught a similar course using the book by Rom Harre' entitled Great Scientific Experiments. I know a number of people who have taught similar courses from that text.