Offers a diagnostic test and twenty lessons covering vital chemistry skills.

Co-published with and Miriam, a freshman Calculus student at Louisiana State University, made 37.5% on her first exam but 83% and 93% on the next two. Matt, a first year General Chemistry student at the University of Utah, scored 65% and 55% on his first two exams and 95% on his third—These are representative of thousands of students who decisively improved their grades by acting on the advice described in this book.What is preventing your students from performing according to expectations? Saundra McGuire offers a simple but profound answer: If you teach students how to learn and give them simple, straightforward strategies to use, they can significantly increase their learning and performance. For over a decade Saundra McGuire has been acclaimed for her presentations and workshops on metacognition and student learning because the tools and strategies she shares have enabled faculty to facilitate dramatic improvements in student learning and success. This book encapsulates the model and ideas she has developed in the past fifteen years, ideas that are being adopted by an increasing number of faculty with considerable effect.The methods she proposes do not require restructuring courses or an inordinate amount of time to teach. They can often be accomplished in a single session, transforming students from memorizers and regurgitators to students who begin to think critically and take responsibility for their own learning. Saundra McGuire takes the reader sequentially through the ideas and strategies that students need to understand and implement. First, she demonstrates how introducing students to metacognition and Bloom’s Taxonomy reveals to them the importance of understanding how they learn and provides the lens through which they can view learning activities and measure their intellectual growth. Next, she presents a specific study system that can quickly empower students to maximize their learning. Then, she addresses the importance of dealing with emotion, attitudes, and motivation by suggesting ways to change students’ mindsets about ability and by providing a range of strategies to boost motivation and learning; finally, she offers guidance to faculty on partnering with campus learning centers.She pays particular attention to academically unprepared students, noting that the strategies she offers for this particular population are equally beneficial for all students. While stressing that there are many ways to teach effectively, and that readers can be flexible in picking and choosing among the strategies she presents, Saundra McGuire offers the reader a step-by-step process for delivering the key messages of the book to students in as little as 50 minutes. Free online supplements provide three slide sets and a sample video lecture.This book is written primarily for faculty but will be equally useful for TAs, tutors, and learning center professionals. For readers with no background in education or cognitive psychology, the book avoids jargon and esoteric theory.

Active participation in the learning process enhance students’ critical thinking and problemsolving skills. We implemented peer-focused, active learning, recitation sessions with the largeenrollment sections for General Chemistry I courses at Mississippi State University (MSState) over a period of four semesters beginning in Spring 2016. The peer-focused recitation program was a success improving student final (standardized ACS) exam scores, pass/fail rates for the course, and continuation on to General Chemistry II (CH 1223) courses. Peer-focused collaborative learning and students possessing ownership over their learning significantly enhanced academic outcomes of our program. Worked-example effect is the best known and apparently the most effective cognitive load reducing technique. We incorporated a modified version of worked examples, employing “incorrect worked examples” and studied the impact of incorrect worked examples vs correct worked examples. We hypothesized that looking for errors in incorrect worked examples would achieve greater attention and would prompt students to actively engage on calculation steps than correct worked examples. Eye-tracking results showed that incorrect worked example format was effective at obtaining student attention and engaging students actively on calculation steps. Survey results showed that incorrect worked example format inspired students’ motivation and enhanced student engagement and attentiveness to examine the worked examples intensively. This research provided insights on student focus while reading and learning chemistry worked examples, and opened new avenues for supporting online learning and usage of tablet PC in the learning process. Laboratory experiments provide students the opportunity to obtain hands-on experience on laboratory techniques and instrumentation. We created a biochemistry laboratory course (CH4990) for third-year chemistry major undergraduate students at Mississippi State University. I wrote the biochemistry lab manual consisting of eleven experiments, which involved protein and DNA extraction, ion-exchange chromatography, UV/vis spectroscopy, SDS PAGE electrophoresis, and enzyme kinetics experiments. A new laboratory experiment was incorporated which allowed students exposure to peptide sequencing and proteomics experiments in conjunction with mass spectrometry. The CH4990 biochemistry lab course is open for enrollment in Fall semesters since Fall 2018.