Critical thinking is a necessary skill set for any college graduate, regardless of their specific major or career goals; and in chemistry, we rely on our students to leverage these critical thinking skills in order to further develop their command of the scientific method and scientific reasoning. Current literature suggests that classes employing active learning strategies allow students to become more proficient with applying scientific reasoning, are more engaged in course material, and typically perform better academically; however, we found that few studies have quantitatively assessed the impact on critical thinking. To provide these activities to undergraduates at Birmingham-Southern College without a loss of content, we have utilized a flipped classroom model in a number of our courses, including our 300 level Biochemistry course (CH308). By flipping content outside of the class meeting we were able to implement a number of active learning strategies directly into CH308 such as Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL), model building, case studies, and targeted critical thinking exercises. We assessed the impact of incorporating these active learning strategies in CH308 on critical thinking through the Critical Thinking Assessment Test (CAT) in a pre/posttest model and aligned these results with students’ perceptions through pre/post self-assessment of learning gains surveys. Our results demonstrate that students in CH308 made significant gains in multiple skills associated with critical thinking regardless of their varied perceptions (gain of 2.74, effect size 0.46, p&lt;0.05, n=18). Additionally, we found that underrepresented minorities (URM) made the most significant gains in critical thinking overall (gain of 5, p&lt;0.05, n=7) compared to non-URM students and found that incorporation of more active learning within our courses was able to effectively close the gap in students’ critical thinking skill set.<br/>

Activating potentials in chemistry education: Assessing the impact on critical thinking through active learning

255th National Meeting (2018)

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