Albert Einstein once said, ‘If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.’ The American Chemical Society and Alpha Chi Sigma promote informal chemistry education (outreach) where collegiate students apply their learning from formal settings to teach children and community members in informal settings. These organizations’ efforts influence almost a million people every year. Engaging college chemistry students in outreach experiences where they serve in teaching roles may benefit these emerging scientists by helping them learn how to effectively communicate the discipline to the public. To date, however, research characterizing teaching and learning in outreach is largely absent. This lack of research prompted a nation-wide survey designed to uncover why student chapters of these organization participate in outreach and what activities are prevalent. Using the results from this survey, a qualitative pilot study was developed that used semi-structure interviews to elicit student participants’ conceptual understanding of the chemistry in their activities as well as purposes for outreach and success criteria for events. Results from the pilot unfortunately uncovered that collegiate students seem to compartmentalize formal content knowledge from chemistry courses separately from informal/outreach chemistry content knowledge. Furthermore, responses were superficial and evidenced significant knowledge gaps. This warranted the development of a novel research method designed to elicit student conceptual understanding relating to outreach activities by compelling students to apply their formal content knowledge to informal activities. Using an interview that combines electronic surveys, semi-structured protocols, instant messaging, and student artifacts, student ideas regarding the purpose(s) of outreach, what makes events successful, and conceptual understanding are being investigated. Early interview results will be presented as well as implications for qualitative research logistics, outreach efficacy, and student knowledge elicitation.

Eliciting conceptual understanding via chemistry outreach: The development and implementation of a novel data collection method

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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