Collaborative Research: Improving Student Success in General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry with Community-Refined Courseware

This project aims to serve the national interest by enhancing undergraduate student success in General, Organic, and Biological (GOB) Chemistry, which is an important gateway course for health-related careers such as nursing and dietetics. Improving student success in GOB Chemistry would help address predicted shortages of healthcare workers in the future and broaden access to these STEM careers.

The project team will develop GOB course materials for both online and in-class active learning. The project will also grow a Community of Practice, including GOB instructors and allied health instructors, that will use the educational materials and contribute to their development. This will help insure that the materials and activities are coupled to allied health contexts and provide knowledge for student success in health professions.

The online portion of the courseware replaces current textbooks and online homework systems with an integrated system that combines instruction with practice opportunities and checkpoint quizzes. Extensive hints and feedback will help students learn in an efficient manner. In-class instruction will be supported through a collection of active-learning materials set in allied health contexts.

Data regarding student use of the materials developed will be used to drive revisions to the content that improve student learning and success. Improved student success in GOB chemistry courses may differentially support students from groups underrepresented in STEM since research shows these students are more likely to persist in STEM when they earn grades of C or better.

The collaborative project team from Carnegie Mellon University and Mount San Antonio College will develop, implement, and evaluate online courseware and evidence-based materials and practices for General, Organic, and Biochemistry courses. The materials will include an emphasis on applications to careers in healthcare to maximize their relevance for students.

The project team will also cultivate an instructor Community of Practice (CoP) to develop in-class course materials and iteratively refine the online courseware. The project team will assess the extent to which the online courseware engages and supports students' success in GOB courses, including the retention of students from groups underrepresented in STEM.

Key questions include: What factors are most predictive of student learning and course success in GOB Chemistry and how malleable are these factors? To what extent do modifications to courseware based on learning data lead to demonstrable improvements in student learning and course success? How does situating GOB Chemistry in allied health contexts alter student learning and course success?

To address the research questions, the project team will leverage the detailed data on student interactions gathered by the online courseware system. This includes "learning curves," constructed for each student and chemistry knowledge component, that describe students' progress with respect to each knowledge component. Such data, collected throughout the learning process, provide more detail than pre- and post-tests that assess learning at only two time points.

In addition, data gathered throughout the entire semester enable analyses that examine student learning across a broad range of topics. These rich data will be combined with survey data describing student characteristics and classroom practices to address research questions related to the factors that most influence student learning and course success and the impacts of situating learning in allied health contexts.

These data will also provide an evidence base that the CoP and courseware developers will use to drive iterative improvements to learning resources. Further, summaries of these data are shared with faculty members to inform their instruction, including in-class time and their one-on-one interactions with students. The courseware developed will be made available free for independent learners and about $25 per student when used (with additional supports) in academic courses.

The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.