Discipline: Science and Mathematics Education
Subcategory: Education
Chelsea E. Bradshaw - Spelman College
The General Chemistry for Majors course sequence (CHE 111/112) at Spelman College has utilized a flipped learning method of instruction for the past four years. The intent of this pedagogical format is to expand learning capabilities by allowing student learning to be self-paced with content delivered online, allowing class time to be spent focusing on student-centered active learning. This study assessed student preparation and performance in the CHE 111/112 General Chemistry for Majors sequence over two academic years in which the flipped format was utilized. Pre- and post-assessments that had been administered at the beginning of the CHE 111, CHE 112 and CHE 231 (Organic I for Majors) courses were evaluated and correlated with the student learning outcomes and knowledge retention as measured using the American Chemical Society (ACS) standardized final exams used each term. Excel data collection and graphical analysis was performed to determine performance trends. Significant findings include the strong correlation between the knowledge portion of the CHE 111 pretest data and the ACS exam, with eight out of nine ACS exam concepts being mastered by students in the CHE 112 course and five out of nine concepts being retained for the CHE 231 course. Future studies include implementing these analysis methods to assess basic conceptual knowledge retention in upper level chemistry courses.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): Funding for this research was provided by the NSF/HBCU-UP: Implementation of Spelman’s Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CURE) Program #1436759.
Faculty Advisor: Lisa Hibbard, lhibbard@spelman.edu
Role: I collected all data values, and completed the excel data collection as well as the graphical data analysis. Once dat was collected and analyzed, I created performance trend graphs to show results and gathered information about the future research questions related to the significant finings.