CHM 102: Introduction to Chemistry

Well, I'm new to blogging. (This is my first time making a post to a blog -- ever.) But I'm also new to teaching chemistry for non-science majors. I've taught General Chemistry ("GenChem") for ten years (15, if you count my years teaching while I was in grad school) and I've taught Physical Chemistry ("P-Chem") for the last eight since I'd joined the faculty at Berry. Needless to say (while I'm certainly no Mathematician -- much of what my friends talk about at lunchtime I simply have to tune out if it becomes "too mathematical"), I like the more mathematical and abstract studies of chemistry. So I was worried when the Chemistry Department decided (along with my consent, of course) that I'd be teaching CHM 102, which is Berry's General Education chemistry course for non-science majors. I didn't know if teaching mathematically-illiterate students (this is to say, students who have a hard time with high school algebra) would have much of an appeal to me. But so far, so good. In the first two weeks of the semester, I've been able (I believe) to teach my students some "real chemistry". And I've been having some fun doing so.

Over the last four years, I've been teaching GenChem (both semesters, the second of which is often referred to as "Baby P-Chem") using Process-Oriented Guided-Inquiry Learning (POGIL -- please, visit www.pogil.org to learn more). In such a classroom, I have my students learn the important concepts of chemistry while working in small, self-managed teams on a ChemActivity. (POGILers prefer "ChemActivity" to "worksheet". I've even heard of some POGILers who call them "funsheets" instead!) A ChemActivity has the students explore a "model" (perhaps real, perhaps virtual data that models a chemical or physical phenomenon), then answer critical thinking questions about the model to help them invent a concept or develop their understanding of the concept, and then they work out a number of exercises in which the concept is applied. At the end of each class, I ask my students to do some metacognition and assess their understanding of what they were supposed to have learned that day. Each student of a team has one or more roles: there's a Recorder (who fills out the Recorder's Report, which contains the team's official answers to the questions and exercises within the ChemActivity); there's a Strategy Analyst (who makes sure that the team is staying on task and using their classtime appropriately, and this individual is also assigned the task of filling out a form that helps him/her assess the team's learning that day); there's a Recorder (who is called upon to present his/her team's answer to questions and/or exercises on the whiteboard of the classroom for all the class to benefit from); and there's either a Spokesperson (who represents the team to the other teams and to me as the course instructor) or a Technologist (the one who is responsible for using his/her calculator when such a device is needed to complete exercises).

While the students are working on the ChemActivities in their groups, I monitor each team's conversations and help teams that are struggling on questions and exercises. While I'm not the best at holding my tongue, I do what I can to help lead the students to "the right answer" without just giving it to them. When a mini-lecture would benefit the class, I provide one.

So this semester, I'm not teaching GenChem. I'm teaching CHM 102, the "non-majors' class". But I wanted to teach it using POGIL. And, perhaps surprisingly, it seems to be working. Each day we start with a ~10-minute quiz which tests the students on (1) their understanding of one or more concepts that hopefully they learned during the previous class period and (2) their understanding of one or more really important topics that was in their reading assignment since the previous class period. And then I have the students assemble into teams (usually consisting of three people, due to the fact that I'm teaching the class in a room with "stadium seating" and I feel that sitting three-abreast allows for a well-functioning team) and they go to work on a ChemActivity. I've found that sometimes I can adapt my GenChem activities into a CHM 102 activity without too much effort. But I've already had to write two (out of five) "from scratch". So I know that I'll be investing a considerable amount of time during the semester. (But, to be fair, I was awarded a Berry summer course development grant and I didn't use my summertime to develop materials. Oops! So I'm paying for my "lazy" summer now.)

Because CHM 102 is offered during 75-minute timeslots for class periods, I've decided that I'll be providing a short lecture between the quiz and the first activity, and if during a day the students will be doing more than one ChemActivity I'll give them a mini-lecture between activities. Actually, I've already seen how lecturing every now-n-then is necessary in order to give the students a foundation in order to understand a concept that the activity they're about to work through will present to them. But I'm trying not to lecture any more than I have to.

I've adopted the American Chemical Society's Chemistry in Context: Applying Chemistry to Society as the textbook. In each chapter, the student reads to learn about real-life challenges that we as a society face (e.g., global warming) and how an understanding of chemistry might serve to give us some answers to the World's problems. I've found it to be very interesting so far. Just yesterday, I had my non-majors generating Lewis dot structures of molecules on the fourth day of class -- if I were teaching GenChem I, we wouldn't have gotten to that for several more weeks!

One of the General Education goals at Berry College is to help students be able to effectively communicate their understanding of scientific inquiry. So at the end of the semester, each student will be giving a ~15-minute PowerPoint presentation of an aspect of chemistry. They'll explain why an understanding of the issue is important to "the average Joe", and they'll explain how an understanding of chemistry could be used to help "make the World a better place". To get them ready for the end-of-semester presentation, they will have to get a research project prospectus approved by me and write up a formal report of their research. I am looking forward to the presentations, and I hope that the class as a whole will enjoy learning about what their classmates found intriguing and worth researching.

To sum up, I believe that my non-majors are learning some interesting chemistry so far and will continue to do so throughout the semester. And I'm having a bunch of fun teaching the non-majors' class -- I really didn't think that I would. I just hope that I can keep my energy levels up, because teaching the class without using lecture as my primary method of instruction does require a considerable time investment on my part. But I believe firmly that the non-majors are going to have a much more enjoyable time throughout the semester while learning about chemistry.

I'll keep you posted!