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Summary of research
interests
Chemical education research at Catholic
University deals primarily with the application of cognitive psychology to
the learning and teaching of chemistry. Our current research has focused
on two main areas, namely, 1) the effectiveness of technological
approaches to teaching on student understanding and 2) explorations of the
learning process itself and the factors that can affect
it.
Research on the technological approaches
includes studies on the effectiveness and student-use patterns of Student
Response Systems (clickers) vs. WebCT quizzes on student achievement. A
new study will look at novice vs. expertsÕ use of particulate computer
animations on student understanding in chemistry. Both of these studies
evaluate the impact of current technology on both conceptual and
traditional (algorithmic) chemistry understanding.
Our research on the learning process itself has
investigated what students do while trying to learn chemistry. An in-depth
exploration of the small group interaction within Process Orientated
Guided Inquiry (POGIL) classes revealed four levels of student interaction
leading to understanding. This study was expanded to investigate the
effect of teacher interactions with the groups. The results suggest that
different types of teacher interactions are more effective with some
subgroups of students than with others. A smaller study looked at student
understanding of what
teachers expect when they ask for explanations of chemical
phenomena. Many students do not initially grasp what the terms ÒexplainÓ
or ÒdefendÓ mean in terms of building a logical argument to a chemistry
problem. Purposeful practice can help student understanding of this
issue.
Additional work has led to the creation of a
paired-question General Chemistry Exam for the ACS Exam Institute. This
test will serve as a useful instrument in the evaluation of
teaching/learning innovations for chemical education researchers. The
results of this test can be divided into conceptual and traditional
subscores. Other work has emphasized the inservice training of chemists in
the practices and tools of chemical education research. The ÒNuts and
BoltsÓ Series of chemical education research workshops presented at ACS
national and biennial chemical education conferences addresses this issue.
Outreach activities for elementary, middle, and high school teacher
audiences have included presentations on the chemical principles
underlying everyday experiences. Some of these presentations focus on the
chemistry behind such typical occurrences as Thanksgiving dinner, egg
dying, over the counter drugs, nutrition, forensics, cosmetics and
environmental issues. The emphasis is on the fact that chemistry is all
around us and everyone should be able to understand chemistry if they
choose to learn.
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