Student reflections and performance: Comparing large and small lectures

CHED 491

Charity Flener, Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana, 600 S. Matthews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801 and Paul B. Kelter, pkelter@uiuc.edu, School of Chemical Sciences, University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign, 107 Chemistry Annex, 505 S. Mathews, Urbana, IL 61801.
Due to economic constraints, large universities are forced to offer large lecture courses to first year students when many studies show that students perform better in small classes. The results of a year-long study will be presented comparing student's opinions and subsequent performance of a large 350 person lecture taught by a professional lecturer versus a small 30 person lecture/discussion taught by a teaching assistant. Student opinions were gathered from an online survey and student performance was assessed using exam scores. If given the choice again, most students would take a class from a professional lecturer but several students exhibited a strong preference for the smaller teaching assistant lecture, showing that small discussions can be effective. Comparisons will be made between student performance and satisfaction according to gender, class size, and background in chemistry. Performance of small/large lecture students in later chemistry courses will also be compared.
 

General Papers
8:00 AM-11:25 AM, Thursday, 14 September 2006 San Francisco Marriott -- Salon 6, Oral

Division of Chemical Education

The 232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco, CA, September 10-14, 2006