A part of 3.1 Inquiry on Teaching and Learning Poster + Talk
Kris Kim, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Physical & Environmental Sciences, UTSC
Marco Zimmer-De luliis, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Physical & Environmental Sciences, UTSC
Nirusha Thavarajah, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Physical & Environmental Sciences, UTSC
A writing assignment was designed and introduced into first-year chemistry courses (CHMA10 and CHMA11) at UTSC in Winter 2020. The assignment is rolled out over the first two months of each semester. Students write a 500-word essay on a topic of their choice. A list of topics relevant to the chemistry curriculum is also provided to offer inspiration. These topics range from fundamental principles, recent advances in chemistry research, to contributions of BIPOC scientists that are not always discussed in our traditional textbooks. Several self-guided Quercus modules and resources were developed to scaffold and support students, including resources on how to utilize scientific databases to search for relevant articles, how to include proper references and citations, and expectations on giving and receiving feedback to peers, to name a few. To introduce students to the process of peer review, they are encouraged to offer each other peer feedback through PeerScholar on their submitted drafts, after which they are given an opportunity to submit a final draft to be graded by a TA. Benchmarking sessions have also been facilitated to ensure consistency in assessing the writing assignment among TAs. This benchmarking and training are now facilitated by a trained graduate TA. This project has been supported by a LEAF Impact Grant and we plan to continue offering this experience to our students through departmental funds. In this poster presentation, we will share our experiences and preliminary insight into the impact the research and writing assignment has had on student learning and skills development. We anticipate that this type of assignment is adaptable to other courses in our department and we will reflect on future developments in upper year courses.
Looks promising! I’m looking forward to seeing the impact on learning outcomes when that work is complete. Do you have learning artifacts from before this assignment was implemented to use for comparison?
Hi Alison,
Thanks for your comment.
In terms learning artifacts, for first-year chemistry, there aren’t any similar assessments to compare in-terms of writing and research. Introducing writing in this way is very new to the first-year curriculum at UTSC. Students do have some writing for their lab report data sheets and lab notebook and they do not receive any feedback on these assignments from their peers. Also. they tend not to do much research beyond the lab manual and the course textbook.
Happy to discuss further after our talk or any other time. We are looking forward to sitting down and analyzing the impact on learning outcomes as well.
Thanks Marco. A common challenge with a new innovation. I’ve no doubt the value of what you are doing sill be significant. This is so well thought out.