The reputation of chemistry as a “weed-out” course in universities across the country may be due to the culture of the discipline, instructor approaches and attitudes, and/or the impersonal environment created by hundreds of students working with one professor. This talk focuses on how research on active learning, learning in general, and chemistry education research (CER) can be employed to ‘shrink’ the large classroom (in terms of the students’ perception) to create a more intimate and personalized learning environment. This process requires significant pedagogical and logistical considerations as well as a close examination of instructor-student communication in the course, since a one-to-one relationship with every student is simply not possible. Active learning reforms, although important to this work, have been well studied and widely applied. More novel in relation to this presentation is the application of research from Saundra McGuire and Carol Dweck which has informed changes to subtle messages embedded in course documents and instructor talk. Awareness of instructor language that unintentionally subverts learning is the first step in creating a culture focused on learning and support and reducing the perceived distance between the instructor and the students. Research-driven approaches driven by logistical, pedagogical, and attitudinal considerations employed in general chemistry, ranging from course organization to messaging, will be presented.

Applying CER and domain-general research to create an intimate learning environment in large lecture courses

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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