Homing in on the Capabilities That Are Most Predictive of Student Success in the First Semester of Organic Chemistry

Click to copy article linkArticle link copied!

The non-major’s two-semester organic chemistry course at UPR-RP aims at developing a more integrated and meaningful understanding of the fundamentals of Organic Chemistry. To achieve this goal, we have implemented a novel instructional design that focuses on nine terminal objectives. The nine terminal objectives describe what students should be able to do with the knowledge they gain in the course. They describe capabilities that expert organic chemists master and that novice students need to solve problems in organic chemistry. Through the development of the capabilities described by terminal objectives, we aim at getting students to observe, connect, and understand the structural similarities of functionalities. Moreover, we aim at getting students to look for underlying concepts to explain the effects of differences in structure. By integrating the terminal objectives into class delivery, we intend to communicate to students what is important, the types of problems they should be able to solve, and where the course is going. This paper presents the nine terminal objectives and the curriculum design that supports their development. It also informs on a study that evaluated student performance on final exam multiple-choice items that were prepared to test for the capabilities described by the nine terminal objectives. Data collected from 400 to 500 students each year for 2 consecutive years was statistically analyzed using a linear regression analysis. The study found that success on certain final exam items, associated with three of the nine terminal objectives, was most predictive of students’ success in the course as determined by the final course grade.