By Sukriyo Chokraborty, Chemistry
Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024
“Ethanol possesses polar atoms; hence, it fully dissolves in water.” Or, “toluene has induced dipole-induced dipole bonds”. Or, “ethyl acetate is non-polar while water is polar”. These were some of the answers that surfaced while grading data analysis worksheets in Chem 3AL, an organic chemistry laboratory tailored for non-majors. Although seemingly correct, all these statements are clearly inaccurate or flawed at a deeper level. Such responses indicated a struggle among students to engage effectively with course content, particularly when articulating their thoughts in writing. As a first-year international Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) unfamiliar with the U.S. undergraduate classroom dynamics, I was rather flummoxed. I had anticipated a degree of familiarity with these concepts, given the students’ prior exposure to general chemistry courses, where such foundational principles are extensively covered.
To address this problem, I started by figuring out students’ familiarity with these concepts and gauging how much course material they had retained from previous classes. Employing a Google Form, I queried students about their exposure to concepts like polarity and electronegativity, prompting them to self-assess their understanding on a scale of 1 to 5. Furthermore, I engaged students in conversations during laboratory sessions to gauge their grasp of these concepts. It became evident that the challenge was two-fold: some students did not retain much material from general chemistry, while many did not put much thought into what they were writing.
Writing has long been recognized as an instructional method to foster critical thinking, which has been shown to correlate strongly with academic success and personal growth (Resnick, 1987; Marzano, 1991). I tried to push students to think critically about their responses on the worksheets and use this to promote further discourse to deepen their conceptual understanding. I collated a set of recurring errors in student submissions and provided detailed explanations of the inaccuracies in these statements. I pointed out how broad generalizations must be avoided in scientific writing and how overinterpretations should be shunned. I also reworked the rubric for the question in consultation with the instructor, ensuring that inaccurate statements were partially penalized to underscore to the students the importance of thinking thoroughly about the answers instead of regurgitating common jargon.
Additionally, I gave individual feedback to students about their writing and incorporated discussions around writing in my prelab lectures. I used the prelab lectures effectively to connect every experiment with the class lectures and with fundamental concepts from previous courses. Following this initial discussion, I would prompt students to evaluate the accuracy of certain statements, utilizing the instructional scaffolding provided during my lecture. his discourse on the correctness and accuracy of certain statements not only enhanced classroom participation but also encouraged students to defend their claims and persuade their peers, a practice known to foster critical thinking (Stowe & Cooper, 2017). We also went over some common errors in the previous worksheet, which helped students avoid making them again, thereby improving their academic performance (especially in the lab finals).
Midway through the semester, I distributed scaffolded worksheets requiring students to integrate concepts from multiple experiments and explain various observations and phenomena. This emphasis on crafting accurate and rigorous explanations, as opposed to relying solely on multiple-choice questions, proved instrumental in fostering deeper engagement with the material. Though initially daunting, students swiftly adapted to this approach, recognizing the value of precision and rigor in scientific writing—a cornerstone of scientific practice.
In end-of-semester feedback, students lauded this approach, rating my teaching as having challenged them to think critically (6.79 out of 7). Moving forward, I intend to continue leveraging the power of student writing to promote critical thinking in my future teaching endeavours.
References:
Resnick L. B. Education and Learning To Think. Washington DC: National Academy Press; 1987.
Marzano R. J. Fostering thinking across the curriculum through knowledge restructuring. J. Reading. 1991;34(7):518–525.
Stowe R. L. & Cooper M. M. Practicing what we preach: assessing “critical thinking” in organic chemistry. J. Chem. Educ. 2017;94(12): 1852–1859.