522 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 74 No. 5 May 1997

In the Classroom

highlightsprojects supported by the NSF division of undergraduate education

edited bySusan H. Hixson

National Science FoundationArlington, VA 22230

Curtis T. Sears, Jr.Georgia State University

Atlanta, GA 30303

Chemistry 121, a first-year undergraduate introduc-tory chemistry course for non–science majors has been re-designed under the sponsorship of the Maryland Collabo-rative for Teacher Preparation to improve the pre-servicepreparation of science and mathematics teachers for grades5–8. A constructivist approach guided the redevelopmentefforts. The course is not restricted to prospective teachersand enrolls students majoring in the liberal arts, business,and some health-related areas. The most significant waysin which the new Chemistry 121 differs from the previousversion are summarized below.

Course content. Fewer topics were introduced than pre-viously in order that the students might attain a greaterdegree of understanding of the concepts studied. The majorthemes were the role of energy in chemical phenomena, andmolecular bonding and structure. The latter was extendedto all forms of isomerism, including chirality, and theirramifications. Selected sections of the case-study orientedChemistry in Context coupled with materials and activitiesof my own served as the textual resources.

Course structure. A schedule of three 2-hour class meet-ings per week rather than the usual three 1-hour lecturesand one 3-hour laboratory was adopted. This structure al-lowed for greater flexibility depending on the topic and thestudents’ progress; sometimes the class would meet for sev-eral successive class periods in the laboratory, in the com-puter laboratory, or in the regular classroom.

Teaching methods. In keeping with constructivist prin-ciples and the goal of actively engaging the students in thestudy of chemistry, there were no lectures. Most class timewas devoted to small-group cooperative activities that in-volved working with information sources, data, observa-tions, manipulatives, computer-based activities, or labora-tory experiments, interspersed with small-group and whole-class discussion.

Use of technology. Spreadsheets were introduced earlyin the course as an approach to complex multistep quanti-tative problem solving and graphical data display.

Organic chemistry nomenclature software and molecu-lar modeling software were used to develop students’ abil-ity to visualize and work with bonding and 3-dimensionalstructures. Use of the World Wide Web was integrated intotwo of the experiments.

Assessment. Grades were based primarily on writtenassignments, experiments, and examinations. The examina-tions used an essay and word problem format rather thana multiple-choice format. In the last formal activity of the

course, student groups were asked to list the most impor-tant concepts and skills developed in the course and to com-pose several test questions to assess mastery of those skillsand concepts, including one “performance assessment”, withthe promise that the most suitable questions would be usedon the final examination. Questions that are “too hard ortoo easy” and questions that test simple factual recall wouldnot be considered suitable. The final examination includeda performance assessment task involving the use of plasticmolecular model kits that were distributed with the exami-nation.

Instructor’s Course Journal. For the first time, I kept acourse journal that recorded my daily class activities, diffi-culties, students reactions, and things that worked and thatdidn’t work. I discovered that I spent a great amount of timethinking about what were the really important concepts andtopics, and developing activities to aid students in overcom-ing their misinterpretations of the course readings and theresultant misconceptions. The journal is valuable in under-taking course refinements and is expected to be useful toother departmental faculty who will teach the course in thefuture. Additionally, the journal was distributed via e-mailto all Collaborative members for scrutiny and comment. Thefeedback from others made me feel less alone in this enter-prise and provided many helpful tips.

The instructional units and laboratory experiments forthis course, including student handouts for all the activi-ties, sample examinations and quizzes, and the instructorscourse journal, are on the Chemistry 121 Web page (go tohttp://www.wam.umd.edu/~toh and then click on Chem-istry 121…).

Acknowledgment

This work was partially supported by a grant (DUE9255745) from the National Science Foundation Division ofUndergraduate Education’s Collaboratives for Excellence inTeacher Preparation Program.

Chemistry for Pre-Service Middle School TeachersThomas C. O’HaverDepartment of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742

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Editor’s Note:This is the first of a series of columns on chemistry

courses primarily for prospective teachers that havebeen developed under the NSF Collaboratives for Ex-cellence in Teacher Preparation Program.

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