Active learning classrooms provide an environment where students are engaged in deep and meaningful learning of the content. Research has shown that the physical classroom environment can impede or enhance the degree to which students engage with each other, and therefore impact learning. Therefore, an understanding of how students navigate the social space within the classroom environment may help to explain students’ development and retention of chemical concepts through discussion with their peers. Florida International University has the largest active learning program in the United States and many of the introductory and upper level courses in STEM disciplines have adopted this type of pedagogy. We surveyed students in a first-semester, active learning, reformed general chemistry course about their interactions within the classroom. Students were allowed to select from fellow students, the undergraduate learning assistants, and the professor of the course as persons with whom they had interactions and discussed chemistry. In this presentation, we will describe the composition and complexity of the social interaction networks within the classroom and discuss any influence of these network interactions on students’ performance on their mid-semester examinations.

Chemistry with friends: Investigating students’ social interaction networks in an active learning general chemistry course

2019 Spring National Meeting

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