Active learning chemistry classrooms are designed to help students learn chemistry while encouraging the development of process skills such as communication, critical thinking, and assessment.  One example of active learning curricula are those developed by faculty involved in the Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) project. The POGIL materials guide the students though the chemistry concepts, but the facilitation can significantly influence the nature of student interactions and development of process skills.  To investigate the role of facilitation, four POGIL classrooms were studied using Toulmin Analysis and the Inquiry Oriented Discursive Moves frameworks.  Analysis focused on two different instructors at different schools, both of whom used the POGIL curriculum in their Physical Chemistry courses.  Data was collected by recording the small group and whole class conversations and interactions taking place in the classroom.  Initial analysis of an individual instructor's implementation of the POGIL curriculum provided data regarding the nature of small group and whole class interactions, as well as the nature and quality of student generated arguments.  This analysis was used to provide formative feedback to the instructor regarding the alignment of outcomes with their desired learning goals. The instructor was then able to make modifications to their facilitation during the next iteration of the course.  Data was collected for this subsequent implementation, and the two sets of implementations were compared.  It was found that slight changes in how a POGIL classroom is facilitated can lead to significant differences in the types of student interactions and the nature of students' arguments. Insights from this work will be used to suggest strategies instructors can use to improve student argumentation in POGIL and other active-learning environments.

Using results from discourse analysis to improve the practice of facilitation in active learning classrooms

248th National Meeting (2014)

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