Pedagogical Reform in an Introductory Chemistry Course and the Importance of Curricular Alignment

Despite the substantial progress made to develop evidence-based pedagogical practices that support student learning, many courses are dominated by “traditional” practices such as a passive lecture. Thus, a continued focus on reforming courses is necessary. Here we describe the deliberate practice-driven reform of a large lecture-format introductory chemistry course. We characterize the learning environment through course observations and exam item analysis. We characterize student outcomes through performance on shared exam items, overall course grades, and a pre/post-survey that includes cognitive and affective measures. Through cross-sectional comparisons to concurrent, unreformed course sections, we find that students in the reformed section scored higher on common exam items, earned higher overall course grades, and held more positive attitudes toward chemistry after having taken the course. However, no improvement is seen in conceptual learning as measured through the Chemistry Concept Inventory (CCI). We argue that this is due to a misalignment between the course curriculum, which emphasizes factual recall and algorithmic problem solving, and the CCI. This highlights the need for reform efforts to address both pedagogy and curriculum.