S Y L L A B U S F O R C H E M G E N E R A L C H E M I S T R Y I, 4 C R, G R E A T B A S I N C O L L E G E

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1 S Y L L A B U S F O R C H E M G E N E R A L C H E M I S T R Y I, 4 C R, G R E A T B A S I N C O L L E G E Instructor: Dr. David Freistroffer Office: Lundberg 109 (in the fishbowl ) Phone: (Don t call me. Use instead if you desire a response) david.freistroffer@gbcnv.edu Office hours: Mon 2:00-4:30PM Tues 2:00-4:30PM Or by appointment Course Description: Fundamentals of chemistry including reaction stoichoimetry, atomic structure, chemical bonding, molecular structure, states of matter, and thermochemistry. Prerequisite: MATH 126 or higher. Required texts: The hardback textbook : Chemistry A Molecular Approach, 2 nd edition, Tro, 2013, including Mastering Chemistry online homework, Publisher: Pearson, ISBN: ; and The workbook : Chemistry: a Guided Inquiry, 5 th edition, Moog and Farrell, 2012, Publisher: Wiley, ISBN: I strongly recommend that you do not try to use a used workbook. Method of instruction: Live lecture, laboratory, and inquiry learning in groups, with online enhancements. Special note on class format (method): The lecture portion of this course will be taught using Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL). This means that most of your learning will occur in small groups without any lecture. Students are usually quite unaccustomed to seeing this teaching strategy in college science courses, so I will take a few inches of syllabus space to address negative student-learning method interactions that I have seen in the past that have prevented students from being successful in POGIL Chemistry courses. Many students need to have some level of confidence in the teacher or teaching methodology being used in a course in order to be successful in a course. Without confidence in a teacher or methodology, these students seem to place the blame on the teacher or the methodology, rather than their own inadequacies which prevents them from ever fixing their own inadequacies. Some educators may describe this phenomenon as a lack of student buy-in preventing students from taking ownership of their learning. So, first, a little about me, I have taught college chemistry at all levels for more than 20 years and biology for the last few years. My bosses (Deans, college Vice Presidents) and my real bosses (more than 1,000 students) have been very positive to my teaching. I have had training in how to teach using the POGIL methodology and have even had a visit by people from the POGIL consortium where they watched

2 and critiqued what I was doing in a live classroom one year after I learned how to teach POGIL. My chemistry students have been consistently successful. Here are some examples of their successes: getting A s in organic chemistry at UNR after CHEM 122, being successful at several medical schools, and very high scores on standardized chemistry exams used for graduate school entrance screening. Once again, the reason that I am telling you this is so that you will know that your success is fully up to you. With hard work I believe that you can pass this course. Now, on to the POGIL methodology. Freshman-level science courses have notoriously high failure rates. And completion of a course with a passing grade has not necessarily given a student the ability to think independently or scientifically (see the American Association for the Advancement of Science AAAS publication on WebCampus). In order to address this, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has sponsored millions of dollars in educational research for scientists and teachers to find a solution. This has given us Inquiry Learning in many forms in the sciences. You can see this reflected in how we teach our youngest children on Sid the Science Kid (a PBS program) to how we train our budding secondary school teachers at GBC. The particular flavor of Inquiry Learning that has surfaced as an accepted best practice in college chemistry is what you are about to experience. It is guided which adds a certain rapidity to the schedule allowing us to cover approximately 80% of what you would see in a normal General Chemistry I class at a greater depth than you would normally see. I have witnessed students in POGIL classes make many more profound, upper-division-like conclusions than you would expect. Inquiry learning is also inherently constructivist. This means that you will use clues given to you during inquiry exercises and your classmates to construct your own knowledge. This will force you to learn the material better and your retention of the material will be far superior than if you learned it using traditional methods. Additionally, POGIL in my classroom is very social, which has been scientifically proven to increase your learning. I have chosen to be up-front with you. You are adults. You probably paid lots of money for this class and are about to invest a significant amount of time in it. I can almost guarantee you that you will be quite frustrated with the POGIL method during the first three weeks of the course. Hopefully, armed with this information and a with a large investment of time on your part you will be able to pull yourself out of any funk that you find yourself in this semester. This large amount of information is here to keep you with me during this phase many of you will find yourselves in at this point in the course. Let me assure you, the reason that I am teaching the class this way is that it really works MUCH better than the alternative, teaching general chemistry by watching me do derivations, proofs, and solving problems on the board (by the way I really like doing derivations, proofs, and solving problems on the board.) At the University of Alaska Anchorage, a school with a very similar student profile to GBC s, where I worked before coming here, we had a General Chemistry I completion rate of 30-40% (means 60-70% of students received a D, F, or W) before we started using POGIL. I instituted POGIL chemistry classes and online homework with a colleague, which raised the General Chemistry I completion rate to 70% (30% of students received a D, F, or W). Twice as many students passed. At the same time, scores on a standardized test remained constant ie. there was no decrease in what the students learned. In summary, without your buy-in you may have extra trouble with this class. Think about it. If you keep telling yourself that there is something wrong with the teacher or the methodology then you are not taking ownership of your learning situation. Humans do not learn like they do in the Matrix movies (ask if you don t know what I am talking about.) Real learning always involves hard work.

3 Goals of this course: Students taking this course will have an understanding of the fundamentals of chemistry including reaction stoichoimetry, atomic structure, chemical bonding, molecular structure, states of matter, and thermochemistry. Use of computers in this course: This course will make use of WebCampus and a proprietary homework suite provided by the hardback textbook publisher. I do not have the capacity to help you with computer-technical issues. You will receive much faster and more knowledgeable assistance from the Help Desk. Please go to them for technical assistance. You bear the responsibility for getting the technical aspects of the course to function properly so that you can participate fully. Grading system for this course: Your grade for this course contains a lecture component that is worth 75% of your final grade and a lab component that is work 25% of your final grade. The lecture grade will be determined by me as described below. The lab grade will be determined by Dr. Hanington and sent to me at the end of the semester. Details of how Dr. Hanington determines your lab grade will be outlined on the first day of lab. Grading system for lecture: There are 650 points in the lecture portion of this course divided up in the following way. There are four lecture exams worth 100 points each, weekly online homework assignments worth a total of 150 points, and daily lecture quizzes worth 100 points. In order to be fair, I will base your lecture grade on the actual highest total number of points earned by a single person in lecture, ie. the class high. If you earn 90% of the class high, your grade is A 80-89% of the class high is a B 70-79% of the class high is a C 60-69% of the class high is a D Less than 60% of the class high is an F Your up to the minute grade the course will be posted on WebCampus in an anonymous spreadsheet. Log on to the WebCampus course and follow the instructions to view your grade. Lecture exams: Lecture exams will include a few multiple choice problems, but will concentrate mostly on problem solving. The exams will each take an entire lecture period to complete. The final will be given during finals week. None of the exams, including the final, will be specifically cumulative. All chemistry courses are inherently somewhat cumulative, but I will not go out of my way to make the exams more cumulative than they need to be. The core of the exam material, including that on the final, will be the material we have covered since the last lecture exam. Daily lecture quizzes: The daily quizzes will always contain 5 multiple choice questions and/or problems. The material will always be based on the last lecture unless you are told otherwise. They will always be given the first 5 minutes of the lecture period. They cannot be made up, taken late, etc. Your three lowest quiz scores will be dropped sometime during the last two or three weeks of the course. Weekly online homework: I have selected what I believe to be the best online homework created to date for the college chemistry classroom. There will be weekly assignments made available each Monday and due at 5:00PM on Sunday. I encourage you to take this homework very seriously and also to help each

4 other online (WebCampus discussion group). In my experience, completion of online homework correlates very strongly with student success in General Chemistry. Instructions for online homework: The homework assignments will focus on what we have covered in lecture for the week. Some of the problems will be based on material that we have not covered in lecture. This will require you to read the textbook yourself in order to figure out those problems. Instructions for access (for those with a brand new book): If you purchased a new book that is shrinkwrapped with an access kit (a small cardboard fold-out), follow the directions in the access kit. When prompted to do so you should enter our course section s ID: CHEM121GBCFALL2012. If you do everything correctly you should see a welcome message identifying the course as CHEM 121 at GBC, Fall 2012 with my name David Freistroffer. Instructions for access (for those with a used book or book without an access kit): go to the website and click on Register New Students No, I need to purchase access online now. Select our textbook and buy the etext if you want (costs extra). Accept the privacy policy and EULA. Create a login and pay $50.00 (Credit/Debit Card) for access. When prompted to do so you should enter our course section s ID: CHEM121GBCFALL2012. If you do everything correctly you should see a welcome message identifying the course as CHEM 121 at GBC, Fall 2012 with my name David Freistroffer. Extra Credit: There is no extra credit given in this course. Lecture exam makeup policy: In order to be fair to students taking the exams on the assigned days I am extremely restrictive with makeups. You will only be allowed to take a makeup if you present a written approved excuse before the next time the class meets. You must take the makeup exam before the exam is passed back to the rest of the class, which is usually the next class meeting. There are also other ways of doing makeup exams that are sometimes allowed such as assigning more points to later exams or the final. These options are only available for approved written excuses at my discretion. If you have missed an exam or know that you are going to miss one see me ASAP. Attendance policy: Attendance in lecture is not mandatory. Your lab attendance policy is to be set out by your lab instructor. In my experience, attendance correlates positively with passing the course. Other policies: Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated and may result in a failing grade and/or reporting to GBC Administration. The students conduct policy in the current GBC catalog will be enforced. This syllabus is not a contract and is subject to change, without warning or notification, at any time. Communications Skills Objective GENERAL EDUCATION STUDENT OUTCOMES Students will have several opportunities to exercise written and oral communication skills throughout this course. They will complete laboratory reports and written assignments accessing scientific information as well as written exams. Oral communication skills will also be utilized during discussions involved in completing laboratory assignments and lecture assignments.

5 Measurement of this objective: lecture exams (students will be able to read and answer exam questions in written form), written lab report (students will clearly communicate scientific information in written form), class discussions (students will be able to communicate scientific ideas orally, ungraded) Critical Thinking Objective Quantitative Ability- Students will use mathematical principles and quantitative methods to complete the laboratory assignments, online homework assignments and exams. Reasoning and Independent Thought- Students will use reasoning and independent thought to complete laboratory experiments and answer exam questions. Classroom exercises will require students to work and think independently. Scientific Understanding- Students will comprehend chemistry and the process by which the scientific knowledge is discovered. They will also develop the ability to understand chemistry and how it relates to them. Measurement of this objective: lecture exams (students will be able to answer quantitative questions related to chemistry on exams, many questions on the exams will require the student to examine data and make an independent conclusion), written lab reports (students will calculate and present quantitative results clearly in the lab reports), class discussions (ungraded) Personal and Cultural Awareness Objective Sense of the Individual in Society- Students will gain an understanding chemistry and how this affects them and society. Sense of the Past- Students will gain an understanding of how chemical knowledge was discovered and how this knowledge has changed society and their lives. Sense of Accountability- Students will comprehend the consequences of human discoveries in chemistry and their implications. Appreciation of Fine Arts- Students will develop an understanding of chemicals and how they produce color. Everything on earth is made of chemicals understanding behaviors of chemicals is fundamental in understanding the appearance of everything. Measurement of this objective: lecture exams (students will be able to answer exam questions on the importance and place of chemistry in society, on the history of chemical research, and how their actions affect them and their environment), class discussions (students will be able to discuss the importance and place of chemistry in society and how their actions affect them and their environment, ungraded) Personal Wellness Objective Students will develop skills in determining the consequences of their actions in relation to the environment and their personal health. They will gain knowledge needed to make important decisions involving personal health. Humans are complicated chemical machines understanding chemicals allows us to understand ourselves on a very fundamental level.

6 Measurement of this objective: lecture exams (students will be able to answer exam questions on the chemical basis of human health), class discussions (students will discuss the chemical basis of human health, ungraded) Technological Understanding Students will gain knowledge of how advancing technology in the field of chemistry will affect their lives and their personal health. Measurement of this objective: lecture exams (students will be able to answer exam questions on technology in chemistry, and human health), written lab reports (students will present, in written form, the use of technology to discover knowledge in the area of chemistry the procedures section of their lab reports) Summary of the Assessment of Objectives: Learning and general education objectives will be assessed with three distinct tools. Lecture exams will consist of multiple choice questions and problems that will test three types of knowledge: recall of factual information; definitions of terminology; and conceptual and integrative thinking. The online homework will emphasize numerical problem solving and reading comprehension. The written laboratory reports will assess their written communication skills, as well as their conceptual understanding of lab experiments. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Statement: Great Basin College is committed to providing equal educational opportunities to qualified students with disabilities in accordance with state and federal laws and regulations, including the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of A qualified student must furnish current verification of disability. The Director of Services for Students with Disabilities (Julie G. Byrnes) will assist qualified students with disabilities in securing the appropriate and reasonable accommodations, auxiliary aids and services. For more information or further assistance, please call