My undergraduate research began when I became a Learning
Assistant for Quantitative Chemical Analysis (CHEM 321) in the spring of 2013.
As a Learning Assistant, I developed an interest in teaching and deepened my
understanding of the course material. I worked in parallel with the professor
to help students understand the key topics and facilitate student discussions
during the class time. In the fall of 2013, I continued assisting with CHEM
321, which was one of six pilot courses being taught in the Active Learning
with Technology (ALT) classroom, as a completely flipped course. A
flipped class contains no traditional lecture, students must prepare for class
on their own and during class actively apply the reading assignment to in class
discussions and problem sets. My summer URSP consists of reformatting the
online homework system with more due dates and pooled questions, combining the
statistical results from the previous three semesters and preparing for fall
2014 statistics and reading chemical education, STEM education and Active
Learning articles and books.
This week my project is editing the course syllabus with the changes to the
online homework assignments. I finished working with the representative and the
final draft of assignments will be completed in the next two weeks. I have
gathered all of the potential questions for the in class problem sets which
still need to be sourced and solutions attached. The final schedule for the
syllabus will be completed and the guest speaker scheduled. The topics for in
class discussion need to be prepared with full assignment guidelines for
participation credit.
