Science Literacy and Undergraduate Success: Incorporating Scale as a Theme in Introductory Chemistry

该项目的重点是规模扫盲，这是美国科学促进协会先前确定的四个共同主题之一。主要目标是增加普通化学学生的规模识字，并建立他们的成功在化学与他们的规模识字水平的相关性。 为了实现这一目标，该项目将规模扫盲与特定化学内容的概念理解相关联，正在各种环境（讲座，实验室，补充教学）中创建和部署综合规模主题教学，并确定如何在基础课程中纳入规模概念导致其他课程的成功。 这个项目的智力价值是确定规模识字率的增加与概念理解之间的相关性，无论是在短期还是长期，明确列入普通化学课程。 基于初步的研究结果，规模识字是一个更好的预测成功的化学入门课程，该项目还建立了如何整合规模为主题的教学导致整体性能的提高，并在特定的内容领域。 该项目的更广泛的影响包括学生的科学素养的普遍提高，即使在大招生介绍化学课程。 更直接地说，该项目正在为普通化学以及教师专业发展活动分发新颖的、以规模为主题的教学材料，以使各机构的学生受益。 此外，由于规模不是化学所独有的，其他大学科学课程的学生也受益于这项研究的成果，并在各学科中实施。

This project is focusing on scale literacy, one of four common themes previously identified by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for scientific literacy. The primary objective is increasing the scale literacy of general chemistry students and is establishing the correlation of their success in chemistry with their level of scale literacy. To achieve the objective the project is correlating scale literacy with conceptual understanding of specific chemistry content, is creating and deploying integrated scale-themed instruction in a variety of contexts (lecture, laboratory, supplemental instruction), and is determining how incorporation of concepts of scale in foundation courses leads to success in other courses. The intellectual merit of this project is the determination of the correlation between increases in scale literacy with conceptual understanding, both in the short and long terms, when explicitly included in the general chemistry curriculum. Based on preliminary findings that scale literacy is a better predictor for success in an introductory chemistry course, this project is also establishing how integrating scale-themed instruction leads to improved performance both overall, and within specific content areas. The broader impacts of this project include a general increase in students' scientific literacy even within large enrollment introductory chemistry courses. More directly, the project is distributing novel, scale-themed instructional materials for General Chemistry as well as faculty professional development activities to allow students across institutions to benefit. Further, since scale is not unique to chemistry, students in other college science courses are benefiting as the outcomes of this research are adopted and implemented across disciplines.