Transforming Organic Chemistry Instruction through Faculty Workshops and a Community of Practice

Author(s):
Alexey Leontyev
Asst Prof
North Dakota State University

With NSF support (awards: DUE-2021175, DUE-2021170, DUE-2021285), the Organic Education Resources (OrganicERs) leadership team seeks to expand and support the community of organic chemistry instructors implementing evidence-based instructional practices. Improved implementation of these methods will expand the STEM pipeline of students in healthcare, biomedical sciences, and physical sciences, particularly students in under-represented groups. We seek to understand and enhance instructional change with a Theory of Change that combines the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) with Roger’s Innovation Diffusion Theory (RIDT). Faculty development workshops, virtual for 25 participants in 2021 due to COVID; online faculty learning communities; and OrganicERs.org, a website for sharing best practices, were used to promote instructional change. This change was measured and better understood with retrospective pre- and post-workshop surveys based on the TPB and RIDT. Participants reported significant gains in all domains of the TPB survey as well as in their knowledge of and willingness to adopt specific evidence-based instructional practices on the RIDT survey immediately after the workshop. Participants will be surveyed again 12- and 24-months after the 2021 workshop. We hope that these results will provide additional insight regarding the relationships between Attitude, Subjective Norms, Perceived Behavioral Control, the Intention to Change, and Behavioral Change (TPB).

Coauthors

Justin B. Houseknecht, Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH Jennifer L. Muzyka, Centre College, Danville, KY Catherine O. Welder, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH