The American Chemical Society General Chemistry Performance Expectations Project: From Task Force to Distributed Process for Implementing Multidimensional Learning

Samuel Pazicni,Dana L Richter-Egger,Deborah Rush Walker,Ashley Donovan,Adrian Villalta-Cerdas,Joshua P Darr,Donald J Wink,John A Conrad,Rachel A Morgan Theall

doi:10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00986

Abstract

This contribution reports the process and outcomes of a multiyear effort that supported institutions in reforming general chemistry using multidimensional learning approaches in the form of performance expectations. Performance expectations are based on evidence-centered assessment design principles and describe what learners should be able to do with their knowledge, a subtle (but profound) shift from traditional course learning goals. The effort grew from the recommendations of a task force appointed in 2015 by the American Chemical Society’s Division of Chemical Education and Society Committee on Education. This task force recommended a participatory process for creating general chemistry performance expectations that was distributed over, and also coordinated across, multiple institutions. With support from the ACS Education Division, this recommendation was enacted through workshops which supported faculty in developing activities and assessments that integrated content, science and engineering practices, and cross-cutting concepts—a three-dimensional structure based on the National Research Council report A Framework for K-12 Education. From these workshops, a group of faculty committed to implementing three-dimensional performance expectations in their courses evolved. In practice, these faculty found that their institutional work resulted in designing learning performances that, while also three-dimensional, were of narrower content focus than is typical of performance expectations. This development process also led faculty to use the structures of evidence-centered design and multidimensional learning to document learning activity designs in new ways, generating a consensus activity structure. As examples of how faculty used this consensus activity structure as a new way to examine student learning and performances, development artifacts from four of the participating institutions is presented.

Highlights

This contribution reports the process and outcomes of a multiyear effort that supported institutions in reforming general chemistry using multidimensional learning approaches in the form of performance expectations
Calls for general chemistry course reform date back over 90 years,[1] it was not until 1990 that the American Chemistry Society’s (ACS’s) Division of Chemical Education (DivCHED) convened a task force to focus on general chemistry curriculum revision
We demonstrate here how the Anchoring Concepts Content Map (ACCM) can serve to support multidimensional learning

Summary

A Learning Performance Model for General Chemistry Learning Activities

The community process we have adopted has resulted in consensus about certain approaches and components for 3-D general chemistry learning activities. This requires the SEP of developing and using models in a way that is similar to the UNO example Each item in the sequence was taught, and the final item was assessed using a 3-D LP (Figure 4, lower right) This example illustrates how faculty used content mapping (as described in Box 1) in building LPs and associated learning activities and how this process can support the development of larger grain-size PEs in the future

■ CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

■ REFERENCES