ERIE, Pa. — A new mid-semester “slide-over” course developed by a team of faculty members, including a professor at Penn State Behrend, has created an alternate path for students who struggle in CHEM 110, which is required for science and pre-health majors, and for most of the engineering disciplines.
The course is the first part of a two-semester, comprehensive general chemistry sequence that introduces students to the basic principles of chemistry.
“This is not an elective course for most students,” said Tracy Halmi, an associate teaching professor of chemistry at Behrend. “They must pass CHEM 110 to move forward.”
National data shows that approximately 30% of students fail a first-year chemistry principles course. Halmi said she often sees it before the students are ready to.
“It’s like an oncoming freight train,” she said. “I can see it coming a mile off, but they can’t. They keep thinking they can fix it if they just do better on the next exam, but the hole just gets deeper.”
CHEM 110 often is challenging because it comes early in the undergraduate sequence: Because the course provides foundational information that future instruction is built on, it is required in the first year, when students are still adjusting to the university setting.
“Research suggests that the difficulty is related to math skills, but I think another big factor is maturity,” Halmi said. “This is a first-year course, and it’s a hard one. It might be easier to pass if it were a second-year course, when students have better learned how to ‘do’ college.”
To increase support for students, Halmi and a team of faculty and staff from six Commonwealth Campuses developed a hybrid mid-semester replacement course — CHEM 101.
“It allows students who are struggling with CHEM 110 to ‘slide over’ into the new course and get the help they need when they need it,” she said.
Students who decide to change majors can use CHEM 101 to fulfill a general education requirement. Those who continue on an academic path that requires CHEM 110 and CHEM 112 still have to take and pass both courses but will be better prepared to do so.
“The intent of the hybrid course is to give students the foundation they need to make it through CHEM 110,” Halmi said.
Preliminary results indicate the new approach is working: On the second attempt at CHEM 110, without the slide-over course, two-thirds of students fail again, Halmi said. When students detour into the slide-over course, just one-third fail CHEM 110 on the second attempt.
Halmi has observed additional benefits for students who choose the slide-over course – an increase in self-efficacy and reduced anxiety.
“I had a student who chose to slide into the CHEM 101 class who enrolled in CHEM 110 the next semester,” she said. “He got a 76 on the first exam, which is a score many students would be thrilled to get. But when I congratulated him, he told me, ‘I can do better.’”
He did, and he is now a third-year biology student.