Attitudes, achievement and success accompanying general chemistry curriculum changes

The University of Missouri-St. Louis Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry has been engaged for several years in efforts to improve the teaching of introductory chemistry, by the incorporation of techniques that have been reported in the literature of science education to have been successful at other institutions. The present study is an analysis of the extent to which these changes in pedagogy have been successful in achieving the Department's goals of decreasing attrition and improving student content knowledge. Secondarily, we wished to determine the extent to which student views about science and the learning of science were altered as a result of these changes. Analysis of data from five semesters of the courses shows that more students were successful in passing the course than before the changes, and that they possessed a higher degree of content knowledge. Additionally, most students expressed increased satisfaction with the modified course. This experiment showed that it is possible to improve retention without sacrificing student content knowledge. During the experiment, we also assessed the degree to which students changed their opinions about the nature of science and its study. It was found that student views were not substantially modified by their experiences in introductory chemistry.