Structured Study Groups Empower Student Learning. I Cannot Write My Final Until My Class Finishes Creating Its Multimedia Text

摘要

"Structure and Reactivity" is the first-year chemistry course at The University of Michigan. Each Fall, 160 students in the 1200-student course earn Honors credit by participating in weekly 2-hour supplemental instruction sessions we call Structured Study Groups (SSGs). Students bring written assignments to the sessions and engage in structured peer group critiques facilitated by upper-level undergraduate leaders. Projects broaden and deepen the students' learning of associated course topics. In the second term, there is a separate section of the course where all of students are in SSGs. In these sessions, students represent their ideas in writing, orally, and through computational tools. Since 1996-97, one of the term-long projects requires all of the students contribute to the construction of a written and HTML literature-driven resource. Creating animations of reaction mechanisms and interactive correlation of spectroscopic assignments causes students to consider the subject matter in ways more aligned with an instructor's work. Ultimately, the multimedia text (print, CD, and web site) is fully owned by the students, and they must seek out each other's expertise in order to examine their understanding. The final examination in the course is based completely on the student-generated text.