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Research: Science and Education
944 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 82 No. 6 June 2005 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org
Student reasons for enrollment in chemistry classes arevaried but the majority of students in general chemistry areenrolled because it is a requirement for their majors. Studentattitudes may be a reflection of the shift in general chemis-try from a discipline-specific course taken by interested par-ties to a service course required by multiple majors. Whenthis fact is added to the large enrollment in introductorychemistry classes and the diversity of student population interms of backgrounds and learning styles, attitudinal aspectsbecome a complex area of investigation. Under this scenarioother instructional aspects such as sustaining motivation be-come as challenging as knowledge retention and application.This imposes a new dimension to effective instruction.
The importance of attitudes toward science has risenfrom widely accepted assumptions that achievement and at-titude are positively interdependent (1) and that affective vari-ables are as important as cognitive variables in moldingstudent learning (2). Research studies have investigated theattitudinal aspects of chemistry instruction in two realms: lec-ture and laboratory. Both are potential grounds to excite stu-dents into the wonders of chemistry. Studies show thatexclusive use of lecture methods fails to sustain student in-terest in the sciences (3) and tends to decrease student inter-est, attendance, and motivation as students feel little senseof responsibility or accountability (4). Adding aspects of co-operative learning to a lecture course showed a positive ef-fect on student retention; however, better attitude towardscience and greater enjoyment of science were attributed toindividual instructors and not to cooperative techniques (5).On the other hand, active involvement might be the reasonwhy students enjoy the laboratory component of chemistrymore than any other part of their chemistry instruction (6).One study looked at the achievement–attitude relationshipand the use of hands-on laboratory instruction as a means ofimproving student attitude toward science (7). Laboratoryinstruction seems to influence student attitudes consistentlyin a positive way (7–10).
A novel course format known as “Student-Centered Ac-tivities for Large Enrollment Undergraduate Programs”(SCALE-UP) has incorporated elements believed to positivelyinfluence student performance and attitudes toward scienceincluding cooperative learning, hands-on activities, real-worldapplications, and engaging technology (11). The most dis-tinguished feature of this format is the blending of lecture
and laboratory together into one seamless session with mini-mized lecture and hands-on activities as the driving force ofthe class time. The prevailing objective of this research is toexamine whether this active learning environment that hasincorporated research-based pedagogy would have an effecton student attitudes toward chemistry and learning. Anxietytowards chemistry in this environment is also investigated.
Methodology
Subjects and SettingTwo sections of the same general chemistry course, CH
101, were compared in the study. General Chemistry 101(CH 101) is the first semester of a two-semester general chem-istry sequence required for all science students. Both sectionsconsisted primarily of freshmen students (89.1% and 91.7%)majoring in sciences, excluding chemistry. One section wasa traditional lecture setting with an enrollment of 150 stu-dents while the other section was a SCALE-UP class with 51students. Both classes have almost identical demographicpopulations of students majoring in physical sciences or en-gineering (68% and 69%), biological sciences (both 8%), andother sciences that include computer, environmental, woodand pulp, and food chemistry. These academic major group-ings reflect comparable aptitudes in math and average col-lege entrance scores within our college student population.
TreatmentCH 101 is a conceptually driven course designed to fa-
miliarize students who must fulfill a chemistry or science re-quirement to the most important topics in general chemistry.This course explores the principles of atomic structure, bond-ing, reactivity, energetics, intermolecular forces, and types ofreactions as well as introductions to organic and inorganicchemistry. The course is taught with no algorithmic prob-lems assigned in class. The lab incorporates basic mathemati-cal manipulations. For the majority of the students thisconceptual approach is different from their previous experi-ences in chemistry.
The same instructor (MTOH) taught both sections andthe lecture section was used as the control group. Studentsin the traditional section attended three hours of lecture perweek and three hours of lab every other week. In addition,students enrolled in one-hour problem sessions that met on
Attitudinal Effects of a Student-CenteredActive Learning EnvironmentMaria T. Oliver-Hoyo*Department of Chemistry, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695; *[email protected]
DeeDee AllenDepartment of Natural Sciences, Wake Technical Community College, Raleigh, NC 27603
edited byDiane M. Bunce
The Catholic University of AmericaWashington, DC 20064
Amy J. PhelpsMiddle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, TN 37132
Chemical Education Research
Research: Science and Education
www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 82 No. 6 June 2005 • Journal of Chemical Education 945
alternating weeks. Students in the treatment section (SCALE-UP) attended the integrated format of lecture and lab dur-ing three two-hour sessions per week. The primary differencebetween the two formats was the passive versus active involve-ment of students in the classroom. Both sections discussedthe same content but the control group (lecture section) wasa teacher-centered classroom with the instructor deliveringthe information while the treatment section (SCALE-UP) wasa student-centered environment where the instructor facili-tated group work, activities, and familiarization with tech-nology. The treatment included four elements: cooperativelearning, hands-on activities, real-world applications, and en-gaging technology. These elements were considered for syn-ergetic effects and not as individual contributors to the overallresults.
InstrumentsPre- and post-surveys were administered electronically
to students during the first and last two weeks of classes. Bothsurveys included questions designed to monitor attitudes to-ward learning science (14 questions), and chemistry anxietyin learning, evaluation, and chemical handling (25 questions).The attitude portion of the surveys was adapted from sur-veys used to compare a modular-teaching approach to a tra-ditional-lecture approach at Grinnell College and Universityof California at Berkeley (12). The anxiety portion of the sur-vey was adapted from the Derived Chemistry Anxiety Rat-ing Scale (13).
Students chose the option that best matched their feel-ings toward specific questions. These options includedstrongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagreefor the attitude questions. These answers were converted tonumerical values with a scale ranging from 1 (strongly dis-agree) to 5 (strongly agree). Questions were in an affirmativemode so that the higher the values the better the attitudetoward learning in science. On the other hand, the chemis-try anxiety options included not at all, a little, moderately,quite a bit, and extremely, which were also converted to ascale of 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely). Lower numbers inthis scale represent less anxiety.
Raw attitude scores are obtained by adding the numeri-cal values (from 1 to 5) assigned to each of the 14 questionson learning to obtain a total score ranging from 14 to 70.These scores were used to compute residualized gains in learn-ing attitude. T-tests were used to analyze changes in studentanxiety.
In addition, all students filled out a standard departmen-tal evaluation that contained specific questions about thecourse and the instructor in both close-ended and open-endedformats. Scale means and standards deviations are reportedfor the close-ended questions. Analysis of the qualitative datawill be the subject for a future manuscript. However, a sum-mary of the most popular answers from the open-ended ques-tions is also included in the results section.
Results and Discussion
Common Factor: InstructorInstructors can dramatically influence student perfor-
mance and attitudes in the classroom (14, 15). Therefore,departmental evaluations were used to compare student per-
ceptions of the instructor to monitor discrepancies that couldjeopardize findings in the attitudinal and anxiety surveys. Atotal of 161 surveys were collected from the two class sec-tions. A scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree)was used. The averages with accompanying standard devia-tions are included in Table 1.
Student evaluations of the same instructor in the twodifferent formats reflect that there is no significantly differ-ent perception of the instructor in the two classes, eventhough the SCALE-UP class consistently gave lower mark-ings to the same questions. Lower markings were also reportedby another instructor when implementing an innovative ap-proach where students become more responsible for their ownlearning (16). The instructor is an important source of varia-tion and if it were the only variable taken into considerationwe could predict that parallel results would occur on studentattitudes since the instructor was perceived comparably inboth sections.
Analysis of Data: Residualized Gain ScoresDue to the complexity of factors affecting attitudinal
responses, the use of raw difference scores raises validity con-cerns. Some argue that raw difference scores are inherentlyunreliable, especially when considering the measurement ofattitudes on different occasions that may influence studentresponses (17). Residualized gain scores, RGS, tend to attenu-ate some of the difficulties associated with comparison of rawscores (17, 18). In RGS analysis post- versus pre-survey scoresfor each student in the lecture section (control section) areplotted. A regression line is obtained from this post versuspre-survey scatter plot. This regression line, or baseline, isused to compute predicted post-survey scores for each stu-dent in SCALE-UP (treatment section). The residualized gainis the difference between each predicted value and the actualpost-survey value for each student, which measures realchange relative to predicted change. These residualized gainsare considered good estimates of the treatment effects. Thepost- and pre-survey scatter plot for the control group
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Research: Science and Education
946 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 82 No. 6 June 2005 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org
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Research: Science and Education
www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 82 No. 6 June 2005 • Journal of Chemical Education 947
(n = 119) is shown in Figure 1 and the RGS graph for thetreatment group (n = 48) is shown in Figure 2. Positive gainswere reflected by 77.1% of the student population in theSCALE-UP section. These changes are above the baseline oflecture section responses (control section).
RGS values for the SCALE-UP class as a whole were dis-sected to investigate whether there were differences withinacademic groups. When academic groups were comparedseparately to the post- and pre-scatter plot, positive changesin attitude were attained by 76.9% of the physical science orengineering majors, 81.8% of the biological sciences majors,and 72.7% of the majors grouped under “other.” These re-sults are shown in Figure 3. When academic majors are com-pared to their counterparts in lecture, the percentage ofstudents experiencing positive gain above the baseline of theircounterparts remains the same as when compared to the lec-ture section as a whole (plots not shown).
Chemistry AnxietyResearch on chemistry anxiety is at an early stage but
the existence of it among chemistry students is palpable (13).In this study changes in student anxiety levels from both class-room environments were monitored. The pre- and post-sur-vey results are summarized in Table 2. Indication of significantdifferences is also reported in the form of p values resultingfrom t-tests performed on each specific question regardingthe three factors: learning chemistry, chemistry evaluation,and chemical handling.
T-tests were used to compare the anxiety level of studentsin both classes. Pre-survey responses from students in bothclasses were first compared for each question to determinewhether the two classes had similar levels of anxiety initially.The results of these t-tests ( p = 0.26 and t = �0.65) revealthat there were no statistical differences between classes onpre-scores (for p ≤ 0.05, tcritical = 1.65). In addition, t-testsalso reveal that when both classes are compared in pre- andpost-scores, overall, there is no significant difference in anxi-ety between the students in the SCALE-UP ( p = 0.48, t =0.04) and lecture ( p = 0.43, t = �0.17) sections. The overallscore was computed using all questions on the anxiety ratingscale. Total scores for each factor in the anxiety rating scalewere computed by adding a student’s responses over all ques-
tions for that factor. When t-tests were used to compare thesetotal scores, significant changes were only noted for the lec-ture section in the factors of “Learning Chemistry” ( p = 0.05,t = �1.68) and “Chemical Handling” ( p = 0.03, t = 1.83).
Figure 1. Post- versus pre-survey scatter plot for the control group(n = 119).
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Figure 2. Residualized gains for the treatment group (n = 48).
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Physical Sciences or Engineering Majors
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Research: Science and Education
948 Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 82 No. 6 June 2005 • www.JCE.DivCHED.org
Anxiety significantly decreased for chemical handling, whileanxiety significantly increased for learning chemistry in thelecture section.
T-tests were also used to compare pre- and post-responseswithin a class in order to look for significant changes occur-ring over the course of the semester. These tests reveal thatanxiety for SCALE-UP students was lowered in four areas ofthe chemical handling section: “spilling a chemical”, “listen-ing to a description of an accident”, “working with acids inthe lab”, and “getting chemicals on your hands during theexperiment.” Anxiety for students in the lecture section wasalso lowered in the area of “spilling a chemical”, as well as in“working with a chemical whose identity you don’t know.”Significant decreases or improvement in anxiety levels wereonly observed for the chemical handling factor for bothclasses. Although students in SCALE-UP completed the samelabs as the lecture students, SCALE-UP labs involved micro-scale techniques only. Additional activities conducted by theSCALE-UP students also used microscale techniques andnonhazardous materials. This may explain the significantoverall decrease in chemical handling anxiety for the lecturestudents while students in SCALE-UP experienced only aslight overall decrease (not significant).
Even though there were no significant changes forSCALE-UP in the learning chemistry factor, the averages foreach area in this factor show increase in anxiety of learningchemistry in only 4 of the 10 questions, while those in thelecture show increase in anxiety in all 10 questions. Two ofthose questions increased significantly in the lecture section,“Reading the word ‘chemistry’” ( p = 0.03, t = �1.94) and“Listening to a lecture in the chemistry class” ( p = 0.01, t =�2.57). Under the “Chemistry Evaluation” factor, only onequestion showed a significant increase in anxiety and it wasfound in the SCALE-UP section, “Waiting to get a chemis-try test returned” ( p = 0.03, t = �1.97).
Dissecting this information into the three academic ma-jors revealed that physical sciences or engineering (P) studentshad higher levels of anxiety in the lecture setting both ini-tially (comparing averages on pre-scores for both sections)and at the end of the semester (comparing averages on post-scores for both sections) while the biological sciences (B)majors showed more anxiety in the SCALE-UP section for
factors 1 and 2 initially and with the end results. When com-paring changes of these two majors within each class settingthere were no significant differences on pre- and post-surveyresults. The academic grouping of all other sciences (O) didnot show a consistent pattern when comparing lecture toSCALE-UP. However, this group (O) showed a decrease inanxiety on all three factors for SCALE-UP and only a de-crease in the laboratory factor in the lecture setting. Table 3includes these results.
Student OpinionsDepartmental evaluation questions that refer specifically
to the course do not show differences between lecture andSCALE-UP sections. These results are shown in Table 4. Theneutrality shown in these quantitative results does not matchthe strong opinionated responses given to the open-endedquestions that asked, “How would you describe this course?”and “Elaborate on any other aspects of this course, especiallythose rated very positively or negatively in the multiple-choicesection.” Both classes felt they had to work hard, yet theSCALE-UP class used adjectives like “in-depth” and “stimu-lating” more often than the lecture class. In almost every in-stance that the SCALE-UP class referred to the course as“hard” it was accompanied by phrases like “rewarding”,“worth it”, “better”, and “teaches you a lot” or “you get more
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www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 82 No. 6 June 2005 • Journal of Chemical Education 949
out of it”. That was not the case in lecture where “hard” wasoften accompanied by adjectives like “extremely” and “too”or phrases like “too much work”, “must put lots of effort”,and “requires too much time”. In the SCALE-UP class wordslike “fun” and “interesting” were used more often.
A phenomena not encountered with the lecture class wasthe aftermath of emails expressing gratitude for the oppor-tunity to learn chemistry. The reason for this effect might liein the fact that students in the SCALE-UP section are famil-iar with the lecture format but not vice versa. Students inSCALE-UP consistently referred to their active class as a bet-ter way to learn and they recognized their roles and respon-sibilities in learning. In the lecture setting the “responsibility”for not doing well in class was more often blamed on theinstructor rather than the student.
Conclusions
The active environment integrated four elements be-lieved to positively influence student attitudes. It was expectedthat the synergy of these elements would show markedly posi-tive changes in students familiarized with this format. Clearchanges were recorded that could help others in their actionresearch. In addition, the chemistry anxiety results are sharedin the hopes they will contribute to a better understandingof anxiety in chemistry. Our findings can be summarized asfollows:
• Evaluations by students on the instructor’s perfor-mance and capability showed comparable perceptionsfrom both classes but the SCALE-UP class evaluationwas a bit lower in every survey question. Instructorsneed to be aware that this is a real effect encounteredin implementation of new approaches.
• Positive changes were markedly obtained in student at-titudes toward learning as 77.1% of the student popu-lation in the SCALE-UP class showed positive RGS.These changes represent gains above projected changesin the lecture (control section).
• No significant differences in anxiety were obtained forthe SCALE-UP classes when total (for each factor) andoverall scores (factors combined) were taken into con-sideration for this class. Significant differences werefound for the lecture section in “Learning Chemistry”( p = 0.05, t = �1.68) and “Chemical Handling” ( p =0.03, t = 1.83) total scores. A closer look at individualquestions revealed significant differences in only five(SCALE-UP) and four questions (lecture) out of 25questions distributed in three factors.
• Quantitative results of student opinions from depart-mental evaluation surveys were comparable for bothclasses. However, the feedback received by instructorsin SCALE-UP was numerous, positive, and inspiring.This feedback came from both informal and formalsources including the open-ended questions on depart-mental surveys, emails received both during and afterthe course of the semester, interviews, and entries onreflective journals obtained during in-class assign-ments. Analysis of these qualitative data is in prepara-tion.
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