Plus Two Peer-Led Team Learning for Large Introductory STEM Classes:
Improved Study Skills, Increased Retention, and Higher Graduation Rates
James E. Becvar, Geoffrey B. Saupe, Juan Noveron, and Mahesh Narayan,
Department of Chemistry, The University of Texas at El Paso
Executive Summary: A new approach for transforming undergraduate learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been empirically validated in a ten-year pilot program that involved 7,231 students conducted at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). The approach improves student study skills leading to increased retention and higher graduation rates. UTEP’s Plus Two Workshop1 replaces one hour of lecture in a large STEM course (>300 students) with many small two-hour Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) Workshops. The Workshops are led by intensively trained undergraduate students in their junior and senior years that have previously done well in the course. Workshops focus on PLTL strategies that promote cooperative learning, content exploration, hands-on activities, academic networking, validation of multiple-learning styles among students, and academic skills development. Workshops provide a small-class organizational environment emphasizing the continuous progress of individual students. The study shows a greater than 15% increase in the weighted average of the passing rate (A + B + C) in first semester general chemistry, and a 300% increase in the number of Chemistry majors for the period of 2001-11. Although the program received a 5-year NSF grant (2007-12) to expand the model to other STEM courses, due to budget restrictions, the institutional support for the Workshop Model for the 2012-3 school year is uncertain. We are currently seeking extramural funding for its continuous implementation.
Introduction
For many years, it has been recognized that conventional teaching of STEM disciplines done via traditional passive methods in which students are first lectured and then assessed for terms and concept understanding is not an effective method for sufficient understanding to allow students to make connections between the theoretical models and real systems. One of the main problems is that teaching styles in STEM courses have NOT changed in the last 100 years, albeit the use of power point projections. Conventional teaching of STEM courses is normally done via long lectures using passive listening and where students are assessed for terms and concepts. This is not an effective method because it does not train students to make connections between the theoretical models and real systems. Lecturing is uninspiring for 21st Century students; when STEM coursework is presented in this way, students do not feel ownership of the content. This perception along with its unfortunate outcome is aggravated by the large-lecture problem in college, for which a typical lower-division STEM course has a student: teacher ratio of >200:1.
The ‘Free-Style’ Plus Two Workshop Model.
‘Free-Style’ Plus Two Workshop1 uses PLTL to enhance and increase 1) student success in course, 2) retention at the university, and 3) successful completion of and timeliness to degree. This University of Texas at El Paso-developed strategy provides an innovative hands-on, active-learning experience in general chemistry courses at this institution. The dramatic success increase seen in Fig. 1 beginning at year 2000 gives evidence for the effectiveness of the Peer-Led Team Learning Workshop intervention for student success in the first semester general chemistry gateway course.
Fig. 1. Student Success (Percentage of Students with Grades of A, B, or C) in First Semester General Chemistry at UTEP 1989 – 2011. The red line is the weighted average of the passing rate (A + B + C) in first semester general chemistry from 1989 – 1999, prior to the intervention. PLTL in course began in 2000.
First Semester General Chemistry (CHEM 1305) is a gatekeeper course at UTEP because undergraduate students intending majors in engineering or science must pass this course with a grade of C or better in order to gain entry into their respective STEM major. ‘Free-Style’ Plus Two Workshop has resulted in at least an additional 1000 engineering and science students successfully progressing into their majors at UTEP over the 12 years of the program. A National Science Foundation grant, DUE 0653270, project I-STAR, “Integrated Student Success, Teaching, and Retention”2 extended the Plus Two Workshop strategy to second semester general chemistry. ‘Free-Style’ Plus Two Workshop in these two general chemistry courses provides a pedagogy of engagement4 to embed student-centered5, active6, small-group7, collaborative8 learning into general chemistry to create small learning communities led by a student (Peer Leader) who has previously mastered this content. The formal linking of Workshop and lecture under the Model embeds Peer-Led Team Learning9 - 11 into the curriculum in a required, integrated fashion so that all students enrolled take part in the benefits of the student-centered PLTL intervention. Peer Leaders in both general chemistry courses engage students in contextual, real-world examples of the abstract concepts of science using simple hands-in activities called Explorations12,13.
Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 show the impact of this strategy on the Department of Chemistry at UTEP from 1988 to 2011. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board does not allow the addition of a required component onto a course already consisting of the number of hours of lecture equal to the number of semester credit hours for the course (e.g. three credit hours for a course consisting of three lectures per week). The Plus Two Workshop Model replaces one large section lecture per week with a two-hour Peer-Led session. Exchanging one hour of lecture per week incorporates a comprehensive team-based, rich learning experience: the PLTL Workshop. At the time of registration, students enrolling in general chemistry must link the enrollment in lecture with simultaneous enrollment in a Workshop section that fits within their course curriculum. Enrolled students now receive two hours of lecture plus two hours of required small group instruction per week for three semester credit hours. Students enrolled in Plus Two Workshop are grouped into sections of about 16 students meeting for two hours per week guided by an
Fig 2. Undergraduate Majors in Chemistry at the University of Texas at El Paso since Fall 2000.
Fig 3. B.S. Degrees in Chemistry at the University of Texas at El Paso, 1988 -2011
undergraduate Peer Leader. Peer Leaders use active learning methods to build learning teams and to strengthen student understanding of chemical principles. Not all Peer Leaders are majoring in chemistry: In fact, less than half the Peer Leaders in general chemistry have majored in the discipline. This diversity in major helps the Peer Leaders relate to their Workshop students.
After returning from an Annual PLTL Training Meeting in Houston, Texas in April 2006, Jeffrey Hernandez12, a then CHEM 1305 Peer Leader (who subsequently earned an M.S. Chemistry degree from UTEP and is now teaching high school in El Paso) coined the term ‘free style PLTL’14 to describe the significant difference that the UTEP program has from PLTL programs across the US. Peer Leaders at this institution focus on the concepts and content for their weekly Workshops rather than follow specific sets of exercises prescribed by a workbook.
Explorations12,13 are short (30-minute) hands-on activities that provide real-world examples of chemical processes of a more descriptive and qualitative nature than the rather lengthy experiments conducted in the usual three-clock-hour chemistry laboratory. Explorations do not replace the three-hour laboratory, but conducting multiple simple reactions builds an understanding of chemical processes and chemical “thinking.” Students experience a sensory (usually visual) event and then grapple with what is happening chemically. One goal of engaging in Explorations is for students to describe the chemistry taking place in their own words followed by writing the balanced chemical reactions or giving solid scientific explanations of the science taking place rather than to perform sets of calculations or plot graphs of the data they collect as is done in ‘regular’ laboratory. By academic year 2000-2001 at UTEP, almost one third of the students enrolling in first semester general chemistry lecture were no longer enrolling in the three-clock-hour, one-credit-hour parallel wet chemistry laboratory course. This deficiency in hands-on experience resulted from the decision in the mid 1990’s of some engineering disciplines here to release their students from the requirement to co-enroll in the parallel “wet” chemistry three-hour laboratory. At about the same time as ‘Plus Two’ Workshop was introduced into the first semester experience, the NSF Model Institutions of Excellence grant provided funding to modify a small lecture room into a modern teaching laboratory. This lucky coincidence of physical building modification and significant program modification enabled us to address the lack of hands-on laboratory experience for a large fraction of the students in the general chemistry curriculum.
Professors often choose to conduct “lecture demonstrations” to spur student interest and to provoke a more personal student connection to science. Explorations provide this motivational connection in a highly personal and individual fashion. The ‘fun’ aspect of the Exploration activities also provide ample opportunity for Peer Leaders to ask questions and to engage their students in developing their own ability to ask the significant ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions. Explorations teach Innovation. Explorations teach innovation because they present students with concrete simple examples to focus on and then students have to answer why and how these events happen. Peer Leaders challenge students to develop their own why and how questions, the very basis for discovery and innovation.
Impact of Peer-Led Workshops on the Peer Leaders
‘Free-Style’ Plus Two Workshop addresses the 2005 National Academy of Sciences’ call for broadening participation and preparing the next generation of STEM professionals and for producing more and better-trained STEM teachers15. An unexpected but significant benefit of ‘Free-Style’ Plus Two Workshop has been to increase the number of students at UTEP who are considering middle school and high school teaching as a career. This may well have taken place by virtue of the extensive opportunity Peer Leaders have leading groups of students in such a significant learning environment. Peer Leaders guide students to help each other with the course material; they direct student-centered learning. PLTL Workshop provides real clinical practice to Peer Leaders, one of the three essential characteristics for modern teacher preparation recommended by the Carnegie Corporation’s Teachers for a New Era Program16. The undergraduate peer leaders are helping their fellow students succeed in STEM disciplines; many are finding themselves engaged and intrigued with instruction – the kind of engagement allowing them to visualize a lifetime devoted to learning and teaching in a secondary and tertiary educational capacity17. This program has broadened the Professional Development of the Peer Leaders by giving them the opportunity to present their contributions to the profession of teaching and learning at professional meetings18 - 96.
References
1. Becvar, James, E., “Two Plus Two Equals More: Modifying the Chemistry Curriculum at UTEP”, Progressions, 5, 3, 2004. Online at www.pltl.org.
2. http://www.thecb.state.tx.us/StarAward/star1.cfm, 2006
3. National Science Foundation, “Project ‘I-STAR, Integrated Student Success, Teaching and Retention’ ”, DUE – 0653270, 2007
4. Edgerton, R. Education White Paper; Pew Charitable Trust, 1998; http://www.pewtrusts.com/ Frame.cfm? Framesource=programs/edu/eduindex.cfm
5. O’Neill, Geraldine, and Tim McMahon, “Student-Centred Learning: What Does It Mean for Students and Lecturers?”, in Emerging Issues in the Practice of University Learning and Teaching, O’Neill, G., S. Moore, and B. McMullin, eds., Dublin: AISHE, pp. 27 – 36, 2005
6. Felder, Richard M., Donald R. Woods, James E. Stice, Armando Rugarcia, “The Future of Engineering Education. II. Teaching Methods that Work”, Chemical Engineering Education, 34(1), 26 – 39, 2000.
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8. Smith, Karl A., Sheri D Sheppard, David W. Johnson, Roger T. Johnson, “Pedagogies of Engagement: Classroom-Based Practices”, Journal of Engineering Education, 94(1):87 – 101.
9. Gosser, D.K., & Roth, V., The Workshop Project: Peer-Led Team Learning. Journal of Chemical Education, 75(2), 185, 1998.
10. Gosser, D., Cracolice, M., Kampmeier, J., Roth, V., Strozak, V., Varma-Nelson, P. Peer-Led Team Learning: A Guidebook. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001.
11. Dreyfuss, A.E. (Ed.), 2008. Internet homepage of the Peer-Led Team Learning Project: www.pltl.org.
12. Hernandez, Jeffrey, Marisa Galan, Myrna Calderon, Walter Dickson, Hugo Alarcón, Daniel Dominquez, Yoon Ju Kim, Rafael Ordoñez, Omar Khateeb, Albert Padilla, Lance Williams, Gina Carballo, Ahlam Azam, and Arturo Montes, “Explorations: Teaching Students to Develop the Important Questions: ‘By Jove, the Whys (wise) have it!!’”, 2006 Peer-Led Team Learning National Conference, University of Houston-Downtown, April 20 – 23, 2006.
13. Khateeb, Omar, Walter E. Dickson, Jeffrey Hernandez, and James E. Becvar, “Explorations: The ‘Whys” Have It’”, presentation in the ‘A Decade of Peer-Led Team Learning’ Symposium at the 232nd ACS National Meeting, San Francisco CA, September 10 – 14, 2006.
14. Johnson, Jennifer L., Laura L. Llanes, Jeffrey Hernandez, and James E. Becvar, “Incorporating Innovative Learning Techniques In A Free-Style Peer-Led Team Learning Environment”, CHED 1534, 235th American Chemical Society National Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 6 - 10, 2008.
15. National Academy of Sciences. Rising Above the Gathering Storm, 2005.
16. Teachers for a New Era. http://www.teachersforanewera.org.
17. Ashmus, Roger A., Giannina Heredia, Nancy Avila, Christina Pasillas, Eva M. Deemer, and James E. Becvar, “Schooling at the ‘Chemistry CirCus”, 233rd ACS National Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, March 25 – 29, 2007.
18. Becvar, J., A.E. Dreyfuss**, B.C. Flores, and W.E. Dickson*, “Plus Two: Peer-Led Team Learning improves student success, retention, and timely graduation”, peer-reviewed paper 1159, 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Volume T4D: 15 – 18, 2008.
19. Becvar, J.E., A.E. Dreyfuss**, W.E. Dickson*, “Training faculty to train students in Peer-Led Team Learning”, peer-reviewed paper 1160, 38th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Volume W3D: 1-2, 2008.
20. Llanes, Laura G.*, Jennifer L. Johnson*, Jeffrey E. Hernandez*, Ahlam G. Azam**, Brittany Vasquez*, Elsa G. Lopez*, and James E. Becvar, Incorporating Innovative Learning Techniques in a Free-style Peer-Led Team Learning Environment, PLTL Progressions, Vol. 9, Issue 3, pp 1-3 (2009).