At Michigan: The Search May Also Be The Answer

A new chemistry course at the University of Michigan is part of a new wave of undergraduate science courses intended to appeal to a broader mix of students. It emphasizes the active search for solutions instead of asking students to demonstrate a perfunctory knowledge of the "right" answer. The Michigan instructors, Seyhan Ege and Brian Coppola, teach an introductory organic chemistry course called "Structure and Reactivity." They do not grade on a curve, and they do not threaten students with the warning, "Look to your right and to your left; only one of you will pass this course." Instead, Ege and Coppola tell students that "we are here to help you succeed." Coppola says his strategy is to encourage students to take responsibility for what they learn, and his goal is to teach them how to learn rather than to deliver large amounts of information about organic chemistry. In the laboratory, for example, students are given a set of unknown materials. Their assignment is not to determine the identity of the compound, but to find another classmate with the same unknown. To accomplish this goal they must cooperate and pay attention to the chemical characteristics of their compound as they test for them. Coppola hopes that, by doing so, the students will develop their ability to observe, analyze data, and conduct a scientific inquiry. Their approach appears to be working. In a class of nearly 1,000 students, nearly 75 percent earned an A or B. Another 17 percent made a C, and 5 percent received a D. Less than 1 percent failed; more significantly, only 2 percent dropped the course. In contrast, when professors grade students on a curve, the results are considerably fewer high grades and many more failing grades. Coppola and Ege are monitoring the success of their teaching. They have found that student performance does not correlate to gender, ethnic group, SAT scores, or previous advanced placement classes taken in high school. Coppola, who personally interviewed 60 of his students, believes the best indicators of performance are how students perceive the causes of their success or failure in the class. His theory is based on an examination of two small subsets of the class. One, called incliners, improved on each of the four tests given during the term. The other, called decliners, did steadily worse each time. A larger proportion of women, who constituted 35 percent of the students in the class, were incliners than decliners. In Coppola's investigation, incliners more often took responsibility for their performance than decliners, who tended to blame the system for their lack of success. He believes that the nurturing environment of the class helped those who accept responsibility for their actions to overcome an initial poor start and finish strong. In addition to doing well in the organic chemistry class, students have begun to apply their new problem-solving skills to subsequent science courses. Their eagerness to find innovative solutions to problems, says Coppola, has opened the eyes of more traditional faculty members to the need for curriculum reform. For example, Coppola's students learned in his course to use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to identify molecules. In a subsequent course, in which they were given unknowns and told to identify the unknowns by using an old-fashioned and difficult technique known as vapor pressure, the students instead used NMR to solve the problem. "Every faculty member in the department would have solved the problem that way," noted Coppola, adding that he sees no reason why students should have to take a step backward. --R.S.J.

At Michigan: The Search May Also Be The Answer

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