The latter question is designed to reveal students' level of sophistication in their beliefs about chemistry. During the Fall of 1997, we used this assessment package in a controlled study which compared students in a modular course with those in a traditional course. The study was conducted at a small, private, liberal arts college with 16 students in the Modular section and 30 students in the Traditional section. We are still analyzing the data, but the preliminary results suggest that the students in the Modular section had a better conceptual understanding of the chemistry, had no worse of a quantitative understanding, and felt that the course met their learning needs more than students in the Traditional section. In the Spring of 1998, we conducted another comparative experiment, this time at a large, research institution with approximately 250 students in each of the two sections.
Analysis is underway.
During the Fall of 1998, we are currently conducting the final experiment, again at the same large research institution in order to replicate the results. Working in conjunction with the ChemLinks Evaluation team, we are also assessing impact on faculty and helping them improve their assessment practices. Our products and services for faculty are displayed on this website. We are making it easier for professors to use our concept questions , surveys and evaluations by making these assessment materials available for download, allowing each professor to choose questions, change questions and even cut and paste parts of different documents to create their own instruments. This prototype course evaluation tool is designed to encourage responses that focus on what students feel they gained from taking a particular classes instead of less-pertinent comments about the instructors themselves.