Quantitative Analysis of Technology Use and Muddiest Point Technique in Undergraduate Chemistry Courses
Authors:   , Alanazi Amal Naif , King Daniel B. 
Published: December 2021

Chemistry is a common college course for STEM and non-STEM students. Instructors often encounter difficulties in helping these students learn challenging content and effectively prepare for exams. Traditionally, this is a lecture-based class, but recent research has shown that implementation of active learning pedagogical approaches can increase learning and performance on exams. Active learning gives students a more significant role in the classroom through the use of different techniques. The purpose of this research is to provide practical recommendations for instructors to increase student learning in chemistry classes through an efficient use of active learning methods and technologies. In the first project, the goal was to contribute to understanding the effectiveness of review session format in general chemistry courses in order to help students better prepare for their exams. Student use of screencasts of a face-to-face exam review session that were posted online in two terms of General Chemistry (I and II) was analyzed. The review sessions were recorded and posted online as both full-length videos and sets of segmented videos. On average, student performance on exam questions of content related to review session questions was higher compared to performance on exam questions that were unrelated to review session questions. However, that difference was statistically significant only for some of the exams. The results demonstrate that there was no statistically significant difference in exam question performance of content related to review session questions between the students who viewed segmented videos and those who viewed the full-length videos. Although the overall difference was not statistically significant, students who viewed segmented videos performed better on exam questions that were of either a similar or lower level of difficulty than the review session questions. Students who viewed the full-length videos performed better than those who viewed the segmented videos when the exam questions were at a higher level of difficulty than the review session questions. The goal of the second project was to investigate if there is a correlation between student performance and providing muddiest point feedback at the end of lecture in general chemistry courses. The data were collected in two sections of General Chemistry I and one section of General Chemistry II. The results revealed that, on average, students who responded to muddiest point questions performed better on corresponding exam questions compared to students who did not respond to the muddiest point questions. In addition, students who responded to muddiest point questions containing mostly quantitative topics performed significantly better on exam questions related to the muddiest point topics compared to students who did not respond to those same muddiest point questions. However, there was no statistically significant difference between students who responded to muddiest point questions containing mostly qualitative topics on exam questions related to muddiest point topics and students who did not respond to those same muddiest point questions. Another goal of the study was to investigate the accuracy of student self-assessments regarding what they know and do not know about the muddiest point topics. The results were consistent with the Dunning-Kruger effect, in that high-performing students were more accurate in their self-assessment than low-performing students. When inaccurate, high-performing students tended to underestimate their understanding of a topic. Low-performing students who were inaccurate in their self-assessment tended to overestimate their understanding of a topic. In the third project, the goal was to investigate the correlation between clicker use and exam performance in a liberal arts chemistry class. Data were collected from three courses. The results demonstrate that there is a statistically significant positive and moderate relationship between student exam performance and the percentage of clicker questions answered in class. There is a statistically significant positive and moderate relationship between STEM student exam performance and the percentage of clicker questions answered in class. Similar results were also observed for non-STEM students. Additionally, responses to a survey on the use of clickers revealed that students perceived clicker use positively as a way to improve learning, participation, engagement, motivation, and overall course experience. Further analysis showed that there was no significant difference between males and females in perception of clicker use; both genders perceived the clicker use positively. Overall, this study found that there are numerous opportunities to help non-chemistry majors actively engage in introductory chemistry classes through instructional technology properly aligned with pedagogical techniques.