A primary pedagogical challenge in large lecture courses with associated lab courses such as general chemistry is the necessity of assessing undergraduate student learning while ensuring that the grading burden on graduate teaching assistants (TAs) and instructors is not excessive. Many general chemistry courses address this challenge by relying upon multiple choice exams and online homework, but these strategies, although effective in reducing the grading burden upon TAs and instructors, do not effectively assess undergraduate scientific reasoning skills. In contrast, qualitative questions that prompt undergraduate students to reason scientifically about course content and relate course content to “real-world” applications both provide valuable feedback for instructors about student learning and subtly prompt students to make connections between course content and “real-world” applications.<br/>This presentation will describe the implementation of such qualitative questions on post-laboratory assessments for three different sequences of general chemistry and describe the effects of this intervention on both undergraduate students and graduate TAs through the use of in-person interviews and online surveys. We find that, so long as grading rubrics are provided to TAs, TAs report no additional grading burden. Our results demonstrate that the implementation of qualitative scientific reasoning questions have clear learning gains for undergraduate students and professional development gains for graduate TAs.

Assessing student reasoning skills in general chemistry without increasing grading time for teaching assistants

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.