The quality science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is the key for keeping the U.S. competitive in the world. Therefore, the United States has to maintain a robust and high quality STEM workforce, which depends upon the high quality of STEM education. Conventional classrooms offer much lecturing and very limited engagement of the students. At least 90% of class time is spent on delivery of the material and only about 10% of class time is spent for problem-solving and hands-on activities. Students at high academic levels are not challenged and thus do not benefit from the lectures. Likewise, the struggling students do not receive enough remediation. Often, only students in the middle find the lectures beneficial. Therefore, the old-style lecturing format is inefficient and not engaging. For the past several years, Fayetteville State University has intensified its efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning in STEM education. Student-centered active learning environment with upside-down pedagogies (SCALE-UP) has been found to be an effective method. It establishes a highly collaborative, hands-on, computer-rich, interactive learning environment for both small and large introductory STEM and non-STEM courses. With the financial support of the National Science Foundation a Hi-Tech Studio Classroom was constructed to implement the SCALE UP at FSU. The students participating in the active learning program are taught how to learn rather than what to learn. Emphasis is placed on problem solving, hands on activities, and team work. Instructors for the course act as facilitators who, with the assistance of undergraduate learning assistants (ULA), guide students toward subject mastery rather than traditional lecture paced material. Students receive topical instruction outside of class at their convenience in the form of videos, reading assignments, and other multi-media sources. In class, almost all time is devoted to group paced problem sets under the guidance of the faculty member and ULAs. Active learning environments have shown great promise at other institutions, and our preliminary results indicate that FSU students’ attendance, test scores, and failing rates have improved under the SCALE-UP program. Student attendance has increased from 60-70% to 90-95%; the American Chemistry Society Standard Test scores have increased by more than 20 points, and failing rates have decreased by half in preliminary analysis.

Studio classroom as a student-centered active learning environment in undergraduate chemistry courses

255th National Meeting (2018)

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