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Mind Games for Mastery: Organic Chemistry Success by Improving Students' Mindset, Attitude and Persistence

Laurie S. Starkey

Cal Poly Pomona

Course Name & Description:  CHM 201 Elements of Organic Chemistry

Project Abstract:

The focus of the redesign is to reduce the D/F/W rate by improving students' attitudes about Organic Chemistry and exploring learning theory to improve their persistence.  Lessons on having a growth mindset will be incorporated, as well as explicit instructions for achieving an A, B or C grade.  Incentives will be given for students to form groups (Organic Learning Communities, OLC) outside of class, and structured activities will be provided for the OLCs on a weekly basis.

GE Credit: No

Keywords/Tags: Organic Chemistry, Chemistry, Growth Mindset

Instructional Delivery:  In-class (face-to-face)

Pedagogical Approaches:  Team-based Activities, Peer Instruction, Flipped, Exam Wrappers, Online Homework, Clickers

Class Size: 100

Course Characteristics

CHM 201 is a 1-quarter survey of Organic Chemistry for non-chemistry majors.  

Course History/Background

• After completing 2-3 quarters of General Chemistry, students can take CHM 201 Elements of Organic Chemistry. Many students then continue on to take CHM 321 Elements of Biochemistry (for which CHM 201 is a prerequisite)
• This survey course has been offered for many decades. It serves non-chemistry majors, including students majoring in Biology, Food & Nutrition and Kinesiology.
• Like most lower-division chemistry courses, it has a significant DFW rate (~15-30%).  

Learning Problem / Low Success Issues

Organic Chemistry is a challenging course because it:  

1. is all new to the students and like nothing they are likely to have seen before - there is little to no prior knowledge of the subject;  
2. has a significant volume of information with concepts that are cumulative throughout the entire quarter;  
3. has a fast pace requiring a high level of student motivation, effort and time commitment; and  
4. demands a high level of independent work on the part of the student - working with the textbook and solutions manual, and on assigned homework sets.  

Many students are unable to commit the required time needed for success and they may have had a significant lapse in time since the General Chemistry pre-requisite course.  

An Organic Chemistry SURVEY COURSE has unique challenges:  

1. students frequently have a bad attitude about the course because it is often viewed as unrelated and/or not important for the student's major
2. it is known for a high failure rate so it is often hated and feared
3. students feared enrollment in the course because it is viewed as unpleasant and it may hurt their GPA, so a lapse in time since pre-requisite courses were completed is very likely

Negative preconceptions and pessimistic emotions do not set the stage for a constructive learning environment, and expectations of failure can often be self-fulfilling prophecies. 

CHM 201 Syllabus (pre-redesign)
This is the syllabus and schedule of CHM 201 before the CSU-CRT redesign was implemented.

Student Characteristics

Elements of Organic Chemistry is entirely a service course so the students come from a wide variety of majors (approximately half of the students are majoring in the Biological Sciences).

Although students should be eligible to take Elements of Organic Chemistry as a sophomore, most put off enrollment until later in their careers.

Advice I Gave My Students to be Successful  

Tools for Success: Organic Chemistry is a challenging course which requires a lot of time and effort on behalf of the student. The following suggestions will give you your best chance to succeed: 

• Come to class and be involved! I hope the iClicker Response System will help engage you and offer real-time self-assessment. If you miss class, get the notes from someone in your study group. 

• Read and work through the textbook. Take notes, try problems, be an active participant. 

• Work on the textbook problems (answers at the back of the book or in the Study Guide).   A minimum of 10% of each exam will be derived directly from the textbook problems. 

• Start studying now. If you wait until a few days before each exam, it'll be too late. Try flashcards! 

• Review your notes often, ideally before each class. Work through your notes, ask questions. 

• Come to office hours. Ask questions about the lecture, your notes, the book, your exam... 

Impact of Student Learning Outcomes/Objectives (SLOs) on Course Redesign

On successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

1. Predict type(s) of bonding and draw Lewis structures.
2. Draw resonance structures and understand the effect of electron delocalization on stability and reactivity.
3. Demonstrate an understanding of the fundamental principles of molecular structure and shape, and describe their relationship to physical properties (e.g., relative boiling point, solubility).
4. Provide a reaction mechanism and predict the products for a given acid-base (proton-transfer) reaction.
5. Predict the relative strength of organic acids (or bases), and be able to provide a detailed explanation to support your choice.
6. Predict and explain the favored direction of an acid-base equilibrium.
7. Identify organic molecules by functional group: alkane, alkene, alkyne, alkyl halide, alcohol, thiol, ether, sulfide, amine, aldehyde, ketone, carboxylic acid, ester, amide, anhydride, acid halide, nitrile.
8. Apply the rules of organic nomenclature to interconvert between structures and names.
9. Draw various conformations of Alkanes and Cycloalkanes, and understand their relative energies.
10. Demonstrate an understanding of the fundamental principles of stereochemistry, including applying nomenclature rules, identifying stereoisomers, and identifying the relationship between given structures.
11. Provide a reaction mechanism and predict the product(s) for reactions of various functional groups, including alkenes, alkyl halides, alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, carboxylic acids, carboxylic acid derivatives and aromatic compounds.

Alignment of SLOs With Course Redesign

Improving the student success rate can only be achieved by addressing all of the content-related Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs 1-11). All activities in the course redesign will be related to these SLOs. 

Assessments Used to Assess Students' Achievement of SLOs

Midterm exams, final exam, attitude surveys. 

Accessibility, Affordability, and Diversity Considerations

Accessibility & Diversity 

Course supplements will benefit all students in our diverse student body, including those with disabilities.  Any new videos will be captioned.

Affordability 

• Sapling online homework system is relatively inexpensive ($30 per quarter) but to make it even more affordable they have bundled the online access with an older edition of the textbook and solutions manual for a low-cost option. The online homework is optional to accommodate students with extreme financial hardships.
• Clickers are also inexpensive. They can be used throughout a student's entire academic career at Cal Poly Pomona and then they can be sold back to the bookstore.  iClicker has instituted a user fee for registering used clickers to another student, so I have removed that requirement  Instead, I have students submit their clicker numbers to me so I can give a small amount of participation credit.

About the Instructor, Laurie Starkey

I earned my B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Connecticut in 1991 and my Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from ULCA in 1996, and I have been teaching organic chemistry and organic synthesis at Cal Poly Pomona since 1996. As a faculty member, I have been immersed in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research around the use of teaching with technology, including creating and assessing online pre-lab tutorials and quizzes, developing multiple-choice questions for classroom “clickers,” providing lectures for Educator.com, creating and implementing assignments for Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) and serving on the editorial board for MERLOT. In 2012, I published a textbook for senior-level undergraduate students, “Introduction to Strategies for Organic Synthesis” (Wiley) and since 2008 I have served on the GRE-Chemistry Committee of Examiners. My community involvement includes serving on the PTA and providing a variety of hands-on science demos at my local elementary school every year since 2009 (see videos on my YouTube channel, ChemistryConnected!).  Click here for Curriculum Vitae. 

Lessons Learned & Redesign Tips

Teaching Tips

• My advice is to not reinvent the wheel.  Identify good resources: websites, videos, articles, and incorporate them into your lessons - you do not need to create everything from scratch!
  
• Be honest with your students that you are trying something new and that you don't know how it's going to turn out.  They are likely to appreciate your efforts and manage to go with the flow as the course evolves and if plans change.
• Gather student feedback so you will have a better idea of what worked and what needs improvement.
• Go slow - you can make several small changes or a few major changes, but attempting to make several major changes is likely to cause problems.

Course Redesign Obstacles

• There are so many great ideas for course redesign that it is tempting to try a dozen different things at once.  I was somewhat guilty of that this quarter and I was pretty frazzled and felt pretty disorganized for most of the quarter!  I tried to develop new assignments and new study group activities every week and new metacognitive/mindset activites as well, but this was impossible to do.  In the end, however, I designed a good foundation upon which to build the next time I teach the course.

Strategies I Used to Increase Engagement

• On the second day of class I used Kahoot to review the course syllabus.  This was the most engaging activity I've ever done in my 20 years of teaching!  The students cheered when they got the answers right and cried out when they were wrong, and we all had fun.  Since my goal this quarter was to develop a supportive environment and a sense of community, I think this strategy moved us in the right direction.
  
• Organic Learning Community (OLC) study groups helped to foster a sense of community.
• Clickers keep students engaged in lecture (and offer formative feedback as well).
• Various metacognitive exercises helped students reflect on their learning and consider the study strategies, thus increasing their engagement in the course and with the material.

Instructor Reflection

• Revitalized and Recharged This is my second course redesign and the program has continued to be a great experience for me. I learned many new ideas at the summer institute and the CRT webinars, and I built a supportive relationship with the faculty in the Biology-Chemistry cohort PLC. We shared our progress and our struggles and I always came away with good advice and a positive attitude - my PLC members were both my village and my cheerleaders! 

• I enjoyed developing the ePortfolio. Working on it helped me to carefully consider the questions I was asking and the data I was collecting, and documenting my work will enable others to benefit from my redesign.
  

• Future Plans I still have a lot of work planned for the future, building on what I've started this year.  I'd like to redesign the syllabi for my other classes to be learning-focused. The more I learned about syllabus design, the more I became convinced of the importance of this document in setting a positive tone as the first major communication you have with your students. If you want to encourage a good attitude, then a good syllabus is the place to start!  I also plan on refining and adding to my collection of growth-mindset, metacognitive and study skills resources to use in all of my classes.

• Dissemination I enjoy being an ambassador for "Teaching with Technology" and I am a much more effective spokesperson thanks to my CSU-CRT experiences. I have already presented my work in a variety of settings this past year: CPP PolyTeach (links to posters can be found above), presentation to a CPP Faculty Learning Community and presentations at Wiley EdTech conferences. In addition, I would like to submit manuscripts to the Journal of Chemical Education describing my "Mindgames for Mastery" findings and "How to Earn an A" study strategies.
  

Implementing the Redesigned Course 

Which Aspects of Your Course Have You Redesigned?

• Organic Learning Communities (OLC) - I will be encouraging the formation of study groups by offering extra credit and providing weekly structured activities for the groups to focus on. Each student in a study group is required to submit a weekly report describing the work done by the group, as well as a final reflection at the end of the quarter.
• Growth Mindset - lessons and activities related to metacognition, brain development and mindset will be regularly incorporated throughout the quarter.
• Exam wrapper - a reflective survey will be offered after the first midterm is graded and returned.  In this metacognitive exercise, students examine their midterm results while describing how they prepared for the exam, what kinds of mistakes they made, and what they will do differently in the future if they hope to improve their grade.  Extra credit if offered for completing the survey and turning in corrections to the exam earns additional credit.
• Redesigned syllabus - I created a learning-centered syllabus to reduce anxiety and to make the course more inviting and interesting.
• Online homework - a problem set is available through Sapling Learning for every chapter covered.  Successful completion of the online homework earns extra credit on each exam.

Adopted Technologies?

• I use iClickers to increase student engagement and provide formative feedback.
• I used Kahoot to do a syllabus "quiz" on the second day of class.  It was a high-energy and engaging activity, and it enabled me to review the important points of the my redesigned learning-focused (and lengthy) syllabus which was distributed on the first day of class.
• I used Adobe Connect to conduct Virtual Office Hours the night before each exam (see screen shot below).  The sessions were well attended and very busy with questions, especially regarding topics that were on previous exams.  These review sessions were recorded so all students had access to the material once the office hours were over.
• I used a Blackboard journal to record student involvement in their Organic Learning Community (OLC) study groups.
• I used Microsoft OneDrive to administer surveys (Forms) and to provide a shared document (Word) to keep track of the OLC rosters.  These tools are similar to Google Docs, but they are integrated with Cal Poly Pomona's Blackboard LMS so the survey data automatically included the students' ID information when it was downloaded to Excel.

Which Professional Development Activities Have You Participated in During Your Course Redesign?

• Professional Learning Community (PLC) webinars, American Chemical Society national meeting, CSU Teaching & Learning conference, Wiley EdTech forums, presented posters at Cal Poly Pomona PolyTeach conference.

Additional Resources for the Redesign? 

• Consulting with instructional designers at CPP eLearning, CPP Faculty Center for Professional Development workshops and learning communities, Saundra McGuire's "Teach Students How to Learn" workshop and book, literature search on mindset and syllabus design.

Redesigned CHM 201 Syllabus
The syllabus was redesigned to be learning-centered and more user-friendly.

"How to Earn an A"; Study Strategies
Explicit instructions are given for effectively and efficiently using your time (how to make "studying" result in "learning"!).

Introduction to Growth Mindset
A first day mindset "quiz" introduces the concept of growth vs. fixed mindsets.

Mindset: the Importance of Failure handout
After the first midterm, this handout facilitated a discussion on how to deal with failure, and how to learn from your mistakes.

Exam Wrapper
A metacognitive post-exam reflection.

CHM 201 Homepage
This is a copy of the course homepage from the end of the quarter (Spring 2017).

OLC Rosters
As students formed their study groups, they recorded the names of the group members on a shared Word document (MS OneDrive).

OLC Weekly Activities
Suggested weekly activities for OLC study groups.

Course Redesign Impact on Teaching and Learning

• Student attitudes were improved as a result of the more supportive environment that was created in the redesigned course.  
• It is likely that by instilling a growth mindset the students' productive persistence was also improved, but it is difficult to measure this without knowing more about the students' backgrounds (GPA, pre-requisite courses, under-represented minority populations, etc.).  Grades were just submitted two days ago, so I hope to continue to explore the student data by working with Institutional Research.
  
• I am pleased with the positive response to the Organic Learning Communities (OLC) study groups.  Again, I need more time to explore the journal entries and reflections.
• An unexpected result was the positive effect on my attitudes about teaching and learning. Redesigning my syllabus to be more learning-focused proved to be a meaningful and surprisingly emotional (?!) experience, and bringing in a variety of new resources to support student learning has recharged my teaching.
• Another unexpected result was building a relationship with a former student who is working as my student assistant. He mentioned that he was interested in Chemical Education so I brought him in to work with the data from this course redesign and we are both benefiting as a result.
• Provided below are posters that I presented at Cal Poly Pomona's PolyTeach symposium (one focused on the technology-related changes and the other on mindset-related topics in my course redesign), along with a compilation of mindset resources I used.

Course Redesign with Technology Poster
Cal Poly Pomona PolyTeach 2017"Technology-Infused Organic Chemistry: Course-Redesign with Technology (CSU-CRT)"

Course Redesign Poster (non-technology)
Cal Poly Pomona PolyTeach 2017"Mind-tricks for Mastery: Redesigning an Organic Chemistry Course by Focusing on Productive Persistence (a Non-Technology CSU-CRT project)"

Course Redesign References (non-technology)
Resources for Growth Mindset and Metacognition

Student Performance

There was no significant difference in D/F/W rate in the redesigned course compared to previous sections of the course.  However, this data does not take into account any potential differences between the two student populations (distribution of majors, overall GPA, etc.).

Table of Grade Distribution for Pre Redesigned and Redesigned Courses

Student Feedback - Overall

• Overall, students had a positive view of the interventions employed in the redesign (study groups, metacognitive exercises, study strategy support, etc.).
  
• In addition to favorable verbal feedback I received from several students, here are some student comments that were written in the end-of-quarter survey (students were asked an open-ended question what other "worthwhile" course component helped them to learn):
  • "You as the instructor kept us motivated and believed in our ability. That made a huge impact!"
  • "Dr. Starkey's encouragement and overall positive attitude toward student success."
  • "This course was perfect"

Challenges My Students Encountered

• A number of students reported various problems with the OLC study groups.  Some were logistical (finding a good time to meet) and others were related to student behavior (if one or more group member stopped showing up).  Still, the experience was viewed favorably by the majority of students who participated.
  

End-of-Quarter Survey
This online survey was given at the end of the quarter and was worth +2 extra credit points on the final exam. 89 out of 96 students completed the survey.

Student Feedback - Organic Learning Community (OLC) Study Groups

Overall, students had a positive view of the OLC experience.  Of those who participated in an OLC, almost all of them viewed it as a positive experience (60/64) and the majority felt that it improved their course performance (47/68).  In addition, using the OLC in CHM 201 may encourage a lasting change in student behavior, since almost all of the students who hadn't participated in study groups in the past reported that they would consider using study groups in the future (24/28).  This confirms the positive feedback I received when I tried OLC groups in this course for the first time last year (see student testimonials in the link below).

OLC Student Testimonials
Feedback I have received about the benefits of the Organic Learning Communities (OLC)

Student Feedback - Achieving a Growth Mindset

The metacognitive and mindset exercises utilized throughout the quarter seemed to have a significant, positive effect on student attitudes and learning. 

• In the end-of-quarter survey, students overwhelmingly demonstrated a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. 
• On the first three questions listed, responses were scored on a scale of 1-5 (where 5 = growth mindset or incremental learning theory, and 1 = fixed mindset). 78% had a growth mindset (average score of 4 or higher) and only 6% had a fixed mindset (average score below 3).  A typical distribution is closer to 50/50. A typical average of responses is 6.7/10 and this CHM 201 course averaged 8.6/10.
  
• Students also reported that they learned effective study strategies and that the metacognitive exercises likely improved their course grade.