Master of Chemistry Education - Mike Dappolone

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Chemistry Content Integration Project
Inquiry in the Classroom
January 2008

Introduction

The objective of this project is to demonstrate that the chemistry content from Chem 501, Chem 502, and Chem 503 is being integrated into my chemistry classroom. Since I already teach general chemisty, seven of the nine core ideas from Chem 501 are already a part of our core curriculum. Those ideas are the mole concept, atomic structure, the chemical bond, molecular geometry, intermolecular interactions, conservation of energy, and chemical kinetics. The other two ideas (the entropy concept and reaction mechanisms) are, strictly speaking, beyond the scope of our A-level general chemistry course. They are addressed in our Honors Chemistry program and in our Advanced Placement Chemistry course, but I do not currently teach those courses.

Since I am already incorporating the lion's share of these ideas into my chemistry class, my efforts have been on refocusing and greatly expanding my approach to these concepts. Previously, my approach to teaching involved a moderate amount of lecture followed by exercises, activities, labs, and assessments. As I am sure is common in many classrooms throughout the country, it was typical for me to use as much as half of our 44-minute period for lecture.

After participating in Dr. Roberts' Chemistry 501 course, I became very aware of the effectiveness of inquiry activities with students. Chemistry is in my background - my bachelor's degree is in chemical engineering, with a minor in biochemical engineering. It should come as no surprise that most of my college instruction was lecture, complimented by recitation and laboratory work. In the summer of 2007, when I had the pleasure of attending Dr. Roberts' course, I can say with complete honestly that I learned (or, really, re-learned) more chemistry than I ever had in my undergraduate program. The inquiry approach, the core of which was POGIL (Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning) activities, fit very nicely with my learning style. Also, its very nature requires that students take responsibility for their own learning, and this was, frankly stated, music to my ears.

During the 2007 MCE summer session, I decided to adopt the inquiry approach in my classroom for the coming year (2007-2008). My goal for this academic year is to generate a complete "course" of POGIL activities, inquiry labs, exercises, assessments, and associated supplemental materials for our general chemistry class (Chemistry 1A), with the intention of improving student learning and fostering greater accountability in student work.

My timing, as it turned out, was impeccable, as my district had already begun to direct us towards a more inquiry-based environment. I took it upon myself to research the POGIL model - I read all of the papers I could find on the topic, and used existing POGILs (including Dr. Roberts') as a model to write my own. I also took it upon myself to rewrite and reformat our labs to incorporate more inquiry thinking and fewer "jump-through-hoops" recipes. POGIL and inquiry were easy to sell to those of my colleagues who also teach the same course, and they were quick (and generous) in offering ideas, comments, and revisions for the work I had undertaken.

It is important to note that I was so taken with the POGIL idea that I have been maintaining an ongoing reflection about the general effectiveness of inquiry in my electronic portfolio. I will, over the course of this project, make references to that portion of my portfolio, and this project and that part of my portfolio will be used to support each other.

Before you continue on reading in this section, I recommed that you read my POGIL reflections found here. Please remember that the reflection is a work in progress and will be updated from time to time, so please check it regularly for updates.

The following links are to electronic archives of some of the materials I am generating for my classroom:

A Baseline for General Chemistry

The general chemistry course in my high school begins the year with a discussion of inorganic nomenclature and proceeds through topics in the following order: composition of compounds, chemical reactions (five basic inorganic types), stoichiometry, states of matter, thermochemistry, gas laws, electronic structure of the atom, periodic law, bonding and VSEPR, water and solutions, reaction rates and equilibrium, and acids/bases. More basic concepts (such as experimental design, data collection and analysis, the mole concept, the metric system, measurement, unit conversions, properties of matter, and basic atomic structure) are covered in our freshmen physical science course, and students are held accountable for all of the background necessary for general chemistry.

Creating POGIL and Inquiry Laboratory Activites

I once heard someone say that "teaching is learning." At no time in my limited teaching career has this been more true than in the process of writing POGILs and inquiry labs from scratch. Of course, I did plenty of research, reading as many existing POGIL activities as I could find to get a feel for the layout, the presentation of the information, the wording of the questions, and the content of any supplemental exercises. I also had the priviledge of attending a POGIL workshop hosted by Dr. Roberts, as well as a variety of professional development opportunites within my school. So I sat at my computer, surrounded myself with stacks of notes and books, and started writing my first POGIL.

Three hours later, I had managed to type the title and pick a font I found appealing.

Creating inquiry material turned out to be quite daunting. I would write based on my own knowledge, and would then consult several published sources to fill in any details I might have missed and check my own knowledge for errors or gaps. (I feel compelled to mention here that the number of errors in published materials borders on preposterous, but that's an analysis for another project).

Why not use published POGILs, you might ask? I certainly could have used published POGIL materials, but I find that I prefer to write my own materials. This is largely to be sure it matches my style, but also because I feel that it's as much a learning experience as a teaching experience. The process of writing out the information, of presenting it just right so that I could ask meaningful, thought-provoking questions (many of which I am quite proud, examples can be found in the text of the documents at the site mentioned above). Carefully crafting each sentence to provide just enough information, being careful not to repeat myself inadvertently (either within a specific POGIL or from previous activities), and making sure that the most critical questions are specifically addressed the most important concepts are challenging but deeply satisfying obstacles to overcome.

Generating POGILs that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time in class has proven to be very challenging (especially because of the wide range of abilities among my students - such is the nature of the beast). Several of my colleagues who use my materials have committed to working with me after the end of this academic year to streamline the POGILs I've written, especially in the area of pacing.

I make it a point to include as much supplemental material as possible. Although I do not believe that drilling on problem after problem is an effective way to teach material, I am a strong advocate of using exercises to reinforce the material after using the inquiry activity. In fact, although many teachers might disagree, I find that piling on large amounts of exercises (not necessarily to be graded, just to be available for practice) makes for stronger students in the long run. In addition, I make every effort to incorporate some real-world relevance into whichever topics I can manage it. I include a "Master the Web" section to get students to do a little informal research about something related to the material in the POGIL. I also link the material to my inquiry labs whenever possible (more on that below).

To date (as of May 2008), I have written POGILS and associated materials for 9 units - nomenclature, composition of compounds, chemical reactions, stoichiometry, states of matter, thermochemistry, gas laws, electrons, and periodic trends. I have also written 15 inquiry labs, and the degree of inquiry in them increases as the they progress into more advanced topics.

Creating Inquiry Laboratory Activites

Most of the labs that my students have conducted this year are rewrites of pre-existing labs that I (or my colleagues) have used in the past. Several of my colleagues and I sat together and brainstormed in an attempt to determine a way to make our "recipe" labs more meaningful (so that, ultimately, the students would learn from them, rather than observe something they've already discussed in class). The following major changes are the result of that brainstorming process, and my subsequent analysis of the old labs:

Background Information - Each lab now includes a section including some amount of background information relevant to the completion of the activity. The purpose is to be sure that this information is readily available at all times, and does not rely on the instructor to lecture it to the class. Students become accountable for reading the information and determining how it is useful. This section occasionally includes some past knowledge that the students are already expected to have mastered but will be of particular importance in this lab.

Safety - Safety, while not strictly a learning activity, tends to be overlooked by students (and, sadly, by instructors). Students are told to wear safety goggles or latex gloves, but the reasons seem abstract to them (since they frequently have no real concept of the actions the substances they are handling are capable of). Further, since no one can ever actually remember someone being injured in the laboratory, they become complacent. Specific points about the safety concerns for each particular lab in writing help foster accountability.

Prelab Activities - This is perhaps the most important of the improvements to the labs my students conduct in class. In previous years, students would perfom most of the work associated with a lab during the laboratory period (sometimes they would complete calculations for homework, but the bulk of the work was done in class). Carefully written prelabs lead students along the correct path towards proper completion of the lab without actually handing them the information to do so. Prelabs are completed in advance of the lab, and I have already noticed that students who choose irresponsibility and do not complete the prelab prior to coming to class have greater difficulty working without guidance. Also, prelabs give students an opportunity to read the lab procedure without the time constraints of the class period and, if they have questions, ask them prior to beginning work (or, in many cases, before the day of the lab). Each prelab is followed by a short in-class quiz to ensure that the prelab is completed in advance and to help reinforce the presented material in an effort to streamline the students' performance of the activity.

The Metacognition Suite - This is the term I use for a short series of exercises that must be completed by the students at the end of each laboratory. It consists of four parts - a discussion of sources of error, a discussion of human error, suggestion of practical improvements or alterations to any part of the lab, and a section called Ongoing Learning (see below). The purpose of this section is to encourage the students to think about the mechanics of the lab, their own performance, and to make a connection (even if it is a tenuous one) between something in the real world and something observed or investigated in the lab activity.

Ongoing Learning - Each lab includes a section at the end that describes some real-life application of something related to the lab work for the day, and then asks them to use whatever resources are available to them to write a few sentences or paragraphs about whatever they can learn from those resources. Ongoing Learning sections are not intended as testable material, but the students' work in this area sometimes piques their interest and can lead to teachable moments and interesting conversations. At the very least, these activities implant the idea that chemistry is not completely abstract and disconnected from everyday life.

Of course, it is not correct to indicate that every lab involves no recipe and all inquiry - at this comparatively fundamental level, that is a goal that would be very difficult to achieve. However, as the students progress through the year, the labs offer fewer specific instructions and more general guidelines (and more challenging post-lab questions). To increase the relevance, the labs typically involve concepts currently being discussed in regular class sections, and they also incorporate concepts and techniques used in previous labs, but with some variation that requires the students to think rather than simply replicate.

As of May 2008, students were conducting labs that required them to write their own procedures (based loosely on previous labs they performed), determine the concentrations of their starting materials, and select appropriate materials. In each case, they must defend the merit of their decisions in their formal laboratory reports (of which they must complete at least 2 per term).

The Internet

The current generation of high school students is a web-savvy group, and I take advantage of this at every opportunity. The name of the game here is student accountability. I have an extensive class website and maintain a comprehensive electronic archive that my students make use of. They can find their homework assignments, handouts, announcements, and resources posted there, and as an incentive to get them to take advantage of the website, I securely post their grades there in real time. Students are frequently required to obtain lab handouts and other supplemental materials at the site on their own.

I also incorporate use of the Internet as an informational resource into each and every lab (see Ongoing Learning, above), and spend some time instructing students on the proper way to cite electronic resources.

Assessment

Click here to download a sample of an inquiry stoichiometry assessment I administered to my students.

Assessments have been a topic of repeated conversation in my school building. With the changes in New Jersey to the science HSPA, students now are no longer required to take a general science examination as part of their graduation requirement. Instead, students will take topic-specific, state-administered exams in mid-May of any year they take a core science course. This test technique begins this year (2008) with biology. Since all students will be required to pass this test as a graduation requirement, there has been something of a scramble by our biology department to adapt to the changes in biology content requirements passsed down from the state Department of Education.

It is only a matter of time - perhaps only a year or two - before similar requirements for chemistry become routine. This is not inherently a problem; some graduation requirement related to chemistry is to be expected. The concerns stem from two major things:

The content the state requires may differ substantially than that in our current curriculum (this occured in several places in the biology curriculum; for example, body systems, and with them, dissections, were removed from the biology core content).
The biology test requirements have indicated that the questions on the test will be 70% process (read: inquiry), and judging from the sample biology questions that have been made available, they are challenging, real-world relevant, and generally intimidating to students.

The first point is beyond our control and beyond the scope of this project (check back, I may discuss it after the 2008-2009 academic year opens and we have more information). However, we have in our favor the cumulative nature of the subject, which should help minimize the changes to our current curriculum. The second point, however, is very much within our control - we, as chemistry instructors, are obligated to teach our students the proper content and problem solving skills that will prepare for a process-heavy exam. Indeed, traditional exams do not address higher-level thinking (see Bloom's Taxonomy for more information), and frequently consist of problems isolated from each other and, unfortunately, the real world.

With this in mind, I have taken a fresh approach writing assessments. As you can see in the example stoichiometry exam posted above, I chose to take a real world process and make it into an exam. It requires students to read the entire problem and develop a sense of the overall process, write balanced chemical equations for each step, link vocabulary and technical information to organize the given information and process it into a usable form, and finally solve the problem and answer the questions that are asked. I wrote this test before getting a look at the sample biology open-ended questions, and was delighted to discover that this type of problem is exactly where the state of New Jersey is headed.

Assessments of the type exemplified above require some degree of simplification. Process problems, in reality, frequently require complex engineering solutions, or, at least, a reasonable understanding of thermodynanamic principles. For those readers who might be critical of the reduced complexity of these problems, the purpose in this case is to drive home the current topic, not to teach advanced process analysis skills.

with Assessments are a constant work-in-progress. We administered an inquiry-based benchmark exam at the end of January, with mixed results. Students as a general rule seemed to grasp the major topics, but had trouble with the details.

Ongoing Improvement

When it comes to materials for my classroom, there is no such thing as good enough. I am constantly revising my work. Students ask questions and point out inconsistencies that I could never anticipate, and their feedback - intentional or not - is a great source for making modifcations to everything I have written, especially lab activities. I keep several electronic backups of my material, and update them regularly when I receive feedback or have a good idea when I'm working on something else. In fact, I tried and failed to keep a hard-copy archive of all of my materials, but I revise them so frequently that I found that I was deforesting the Midwest with all of the paper I was going through. I have resolved to make only one paper hardcopy per marking period (near the end), so that at least I have something, just in case.

I am in the process of consolidating a large number of handwritten corrections to my activities - I will post some samples of my own scratch work as soon as I get it organized.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, hopefully, all of this work will lead to a coherent chemistry course from which students will learn some chemistry and, more importantly, critical thinking skills. I am a pragmatist, so when I say that not every student that comes through my classroom will become a chemist, I do not mean it to sound hopeless. I hope that even the students who leave me with very little chemistry in their brains at least take away an increased sense of accountability for their work, and maybe even some problem-solving skills. I once told a particularly bitter and unmotivated student "You do not have to love chemistry; but you do have to pass it." I think that sums it up very nicely.

Compiling data that shows definitive improvements in chemistry content knowledge is challenging but ultimately possible. Proof of improved accountability and responsibility will be more difficult to quantify - but I will find a way to make it reportable.

Please check back here often for more updates.