Promoting Frequent Assessment to Improve Student Learning

Chemistry has customarily been a course that gives students great difficulty. It requires that students not only be able to acquire and retain a great deal of knowledge, but also apply this knowledge in a variety of different situations. Acquisition of problem solving skills requires frequent (daily) installments of “time on task”. This research project was designed to keep students on track by requiring more frequent interaction of the student with the material. Two sections of Principles of Chemistry II, CHEM 1212, were examined. One section served as the experimental group and the other as the control group. The control group followed a traditional format of lecture homework assignments and laboratory reports all done as post-assignments. The experimental group also submitted post-assignments, but in addition was required to complete pre-lecture and pre-lab assignments. The experiment proved to be highly successful with increased pass rates for students in the experimental section