P-Chem Advice

Now that I’ve turned in final grades, I have the opportunity to read my end-of-semester teaching evaluations. Except they’re no longer officially called teaching evaluations. Last year, the faculty voted in favor of a re-designed form. It’s officially called the Student Evaluation of Educational Experience (SEEE). The name makes sense, because the questions now ask the students to reflect on their learning experience. I particularly like that we added questions asking them how much they perceived they have learned, how much effort they believe they put in, and their perceptions of the workload. I’m certainly biased in favor of the new form because I was on the ad-hoc committee that spent the better part of a year redesigning it. The only drawback is that the new name is a mouthful, and so folks are likely still referring to the forms as teaching evaluations.

One open-ended question that we added: “What advice would you give to another student who is considering taking this course?”

Here’s what my P-Chem (Quantum) students thought (italicized), and what I thought about what they thought.

The best overall summary from a student that encompasses most of the important points: Stay on task; read before coming to class; go over your notes after class; visit office hours; do each problem on the problem set shortly after class.

One thing I tried to stress every class period was to point out the specific problem set questions they should attempt after class. During the lecture, I would provide context for each problem. Here are some related comments on the same issue.

·      Highly recommend doing assignments the day they’re assigned. Study a little every day.

·      Go to office hours, read before class, and do homework in timely manner.

·      Work hard on problem sets, it helps for exams. Ask questions if you are confused. Take time to really annotate problem sets.

·      Do the homework in advance and go to office hours.

·      Come to class always. Do problem sets. Study a lot.

One potential disadvantage of my new approach to problem sets is that students still get full credit even if they are unable to finish the problem set as long as they do a decent job annotating after getting the solutions. It puts more responsibility on the students; this is a good thing in my opinion, and I think appropriate for juniors and seniors. But as you can see from the comments, many of the students indicated that doing the problem sets was very important. Close to half the class mentioned this in some form.

Math (calculus) is always a concern as illustrated below. This came from students who barely scraped by in the class, but also from students who aced the class.

·      If you haven’t taken a math class in a couple of years because you either earned AP credit for calc, or finished early on, do not take this class without first brushing up on calculus.

·      Review previous classes and lessons, like calc and chem.

·      Be devoted to really engaging the material. Take the time outside of class to really become proficient in the require math skills.

·      Read the book, review math concepts.

·      Remember your Calc 1 class. Calc 3 would help but not needed.

I thought the last comment was funny because Quantum has a lot of integral calculus mostly found in Calc 2, while differential calculus is mostly found in Calc 1. Students need both Calc 1 and 2 as pre-requisites for P-Chem. This student had taken Calc 3 (and had very strong math skills – yes, I can identify the student’s handwriting) realized that comfortability with math helps.

One student did something that I did as a student: Rewriting my notes to study for tests proved to be very useful as a study tool. It really helped me understand the conceptual part of the class.

Another student’s brief, sage advice: Put in the work, it is worth it.

And my favorite cryptic advice from a student: Be ready for a course which questions how you think of chemistry. I particularly like this one, because this student I think tasted the mind-blowing experience that is Quantum chemistry. It makes you look at everything in a new way. Since my specialty is chemical bonding, we delved into the nitty-gritty and surprising details of how chemical bonds are represented and the pros and cons of different models. Electrons are enigmatic creatures; we don’t quite know their boundaries!

Since students are encountering the new form for the first time, I’m hoping that the advice will build for the next class. I’m definitely going to list all the advice provided by the students this semester in P-Chem 1 for my upcoming P-Chem 2 class next semester. For the most part, the same advice holds. (Biochemistry majors are only required to take one semester of P-Chem, they get to choose which but the majority opt for P-Chem 2. Chemistry majors have to take both.) Hopefully this helps the next group, and then the next... the gift that keeps on giving.

My evaluations from students are generally quite good, but they were even better than I expected this semester. It might be that the redesigned form asking the students to be more reflective leads them to (gasp!) actually be more reflective! But it may be that I had anomalously small G-Chem (Honors) and P-Chem classes this semester and that I had built a better rapport with the students because of this. The test will be next semester when I have a third more G-Chem students and double the number of P-Chem students. It will be a busy semester so I better enjoy my break now!