Graduate School Form 30 Updated 1/15/2015 PURDUE UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL Thesis/Dissertation Acceptance This is to certify that the thesis/dissertation prepared By Entitled For the degree of Is approved by the final examining committee: To the best of my knowledge and as understood by the student in the Thesis/Dissertation Agreement, Publication Delay, and Certification Disclaimer (Graduate School Form 32), this thesis/dissertation adheres to the provisions of Purdue University’s “Policy of Integrity in Research” and the use of copyright material. Approved by Major Professor(s): Approved by: Head of the Departmental Graduate Program Date i A COMPARISON OF FIRST-SEMESTER ORGANIC CHEMISTRY STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES AND MASTERY OF CURVED-ARROW FORMALISM IN FACE- TO-FACE AND CYBER PEER-LED TEAM LEARNING A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Sarah Beth Wilson In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2015 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana ii For my husband and son iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express immense gratitude to my research advisor, Dr. Pratibha Varma-Nelson, for investing her expertise, mentoring, and enthusiasm to help me grow from an organic chemist who enjoyed teaching into an education researcher. Forever, I will hear her voice asking me “What does the literature say about that?” in order to instill in me a dedication to both research-based teaching practices and thorough research habits.
Furthermore, I appreciate her generous support of my participation in conferences in order to develop relationships in our research community. Likewise, I would like to thank each of my Committee members for their extraordinary availability, sharing of their deep expertise, and helpful suggestions: Dr. George Bodner; Dr. Trevor Anderson; and Dr.
The hours I have been able to speak with each of you about education research theories or organic chemistry during the past four and a half years have been priceless. Secondly, I would like to thank the IUPUI Chemistry & Chemical Biology faculty and staff. Jay Siegel will always be remembered as the person who introduced me to Dr. Varma-Nelson, which set my feet on this doctoral journey.
Siegel and Dr. Nigel Richards were very supportive department chairs who enabled me to pursue a research concentration at that had hitherto been unexplored on their campus. Furthermore, I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to partner with Drs. iv Minto, Richards, Ge, and Oh to generate the PLTL workshop materials and train the peer leaders.
Thank you for opening your classrooms for this research to occur. Additionally, Kitty O’Dougherty and Beverly Hewitt have been supremely helpful and supportive throughout my graduate work. I am grateful to each of the past and present members of the cPLTL Research Team and IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning for their friendliness and enthusiasm to share their wisdom and expertise, including: Dr. Terri Tarr; Dr.
Lin Zhu; Tom Janke; Randy Newbrough; Lorie Shuck; Lauren Easterling; Chad Beckner; Angela Briel; Richard Turner; Anusha Rao; Catherine Kaufman; Douglas Jerolimov; James Gregory; Kael Kanczuzewski; Mariah Judd; Juliana Banks; Eric Bauer; and Lorna Dawe. Your humor and warmth make every day a pleasure. Likewise, I would like to thank my undergraduate research assistants for their hard work: Jordan Cagle and Eunice Jeong. In particular, mentoring Jordan, who was tireless in her effort to transcribe recordings and enthusiastic to learn both qualitative and quantitative research methods, has been a highlight of my doctoral work.
Although I have enjoyed a collegial relationship with all of the IUPUI, Purdue University, and Indiana University faculty with whom I’ve had the pleasure to work, I would like to express particular appreciation to Drs. Katherine Marrs, Charlie Feldhaus, Jeffrey Watt, and Andrew Gavin for including me in your interdisciplinary discipline- based education research community so warmly; I thoroughly enjoyed learning from you. Likewise, I would like to thank Dr. Simon Rhodes for always taking the time to ask about my research, progress, and career plans.
v I heartily express my gratitude to the sixty PLTL/cPLTL organic chemistry peer leaders with whom I have had the pleasure to partner over the past five years. Your humor, dedication, and creativity to help students learn and collaborate have been inspiring. Being able to mentor each of you, if only for a brief time, was a pleasure. Likewise, I would like to thank my research participants; their openness and willingness to share their ideas were crucial in this research effort.
Finally, I would like to express abundant appreciation to my family and friends for their tremendous love and support. Special gratitude goes to my beloved husband, Mike, for celebrating each milestone along the way. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES. x LIST OF FIGURES .1 Impetus of the Study .2 Statement of the Problem .5 Significance of the Study.
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE.1 Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL).2 History of PLTL .5 Reasoning Skills & Critical Thinking.6 Student Perceptions Research .7 Research on Peer Leaders .8 Variants of the PLTL Model.1 In-class Peer Leaders .3 PLTL in Laboratories .4 Peer-Led Guided Inquiry (PLGI) .2 Cyber Peer-Led Team Learning .3 Comparison of Face-to-Face and Synchronous Online Learning .4 Curved-Arrow Formalism in Organic Chemistry .5 Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives for the Cognitive Domain .2 Description of PLTL Implementation in First-Semester Organic Chemistry at the Institution .3 Description of cPLTL Implementation in First-Semester Organic Chemistry .5 Quantitative Data Collection and Analysis .1 Quantitative Data Collection .2 Variables in Quantitative Analysis .3 Quantitative Data Analysis .4 Reliability & Validity of the Quantitative Data Collection & Analysis .6 Qualitative Data Collection .1 Qualitative Data Analysis .2 Reliability & Validity of the Qualitative Data Collection & Analysis .7 Advantages & Limitations of the Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods Design .8 Research Permission & Ethical Considerations .9 Role of the Researcher and Research Bias .1 Comparison of PLTL and cPLTL Students’ Performance Measures.2 Analysis of Students’ Experiences in PLTL and cPLTL Settings .3 Analysis of PLTL and cPLTL Students’ Workshop Discourse for Emergent Themes .4 Analysis of PLTL and cPLTL Students’ Workshop Discourse for Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain Categories .5 Analysis of Students’ Use of Curved-arrow Formalism .2 Cyber PLTL Students .6 Codification of Curved-arrow Formalism Analytic Framework .7 Analysis of Student’s Problem-solving Process .1 Response to Guiding Research Question 1: How do organic chemistry students experience the PLTL and cPLTL settings? .2 Response to Guiding Research Question 2: Are organic chemistry students’ performance comparable in the PLTL and cPLTL settings? .3 Response to Guiding Research Question 3: Do high- and low-performing students experience the PLTL & cPLTL settings differently? .4 Response to Guiding Research Question 4: Do high- and low-performing students from the PLTL & cPLTL settings use or understand curved-arrow formalism differently? .5 Implications for Faculty. 146 APPENDICES Appendix A Tabular Summary of Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) & Peer-Led Guided Inquiry (PLGI) Literature. 162 Appendix B Student Perception Survey. 184 Appendix C Semi-Structured Student Interview Protocol.
185 Appendix D Semi-Structured Peer Leader Interview Protocol. 191 Appendix E Course Grade and Percentage Correct CAF during Interview. 194 x LIST OF TABLES Table .Page Table 2-1 Types of research approaches identified from 62 peer-reviewed studies. 11 Table 2-2 Factors given as indicators of student success.
14 Table 2-3 Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain. 39 Table 3-1 Summary of DFW rates by semester. 45 Table 3-2 Variables included in quantitative analysis. 51 Table 3-3 Assumptions and evidence to examine for a one-factor ANCOVA.
52 Table 3-4 Phases of thematic analysis. 61 Table 4-1 Student perception of workshop activities on their learning survey results. 70 Table 4-2 Frequency of discourse revealing lack of workshop preparedness by setting. 72 Table 4-3 Student perception of workshop preparedness survey results.
74 Table 4-4 Student workshop setting choice survey results. 75 Table 4-5 Frequency of answer-checking discourse by setting. 79 Table 4-6 Frequency of problem-solving discourse by setting. 80 Table 4-7 Frequency of sense of community discourse by setting.
81 Table 4-8 Frequency of peer leader praise by setting. 82 Table 4-9 Frequency of mentoring discourse by setting. 82 Table 4-10 Frequency of online resource use during workshops by setting.Page Table 4-11 Excerpt from Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain Action Verbs. 86 Table 4-12 Frequency of discourse revealing Remembering by setting.
87 Table 4-13 Frequency of discourse revealing Understanding by setting. 88 Table 4-14 Frequency of discourse revealing Applying by setting. 89 Table 4-15 Frequency of discourse revealing Analyzing by setting. 90 Table 4-16 Frequency of discourse revealing Evaluating by setting.
91 Table 4-17 Curved-arrow formalism analytic framework. 126 Table 4-18 Frequencies of correct and incorrect curved-arrow formalism by setting. 127 Table 4-19 Frequencies of interview students’ curved-arrow formalism error categories by setting. 128 xii LIST OF FIGURES Figure .Page Figure 1-1 Venn diagram representing the three factors and four interaction factors which affect students’ understanding of external representations.
5 Figure 2-1 Five emergent themes from review of 62 PLTL studies. 12 Figure 2-2 Toulmin’s Argumentation Pattern. 32 Figure 2-3 Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain. 40 Figure 3-1 Convergent parallel mixed methods study design.
42 Figure 3-2 Histogram of PLTL organic chemistry workshop series attendance. 44 Figure 3-3 Distribution of Organic Chemistry Course Grades with versus without PLTL (Fall semesters 2009-2014). 45 Figure 3-4 Quantitative data collection & analysis. 50 Figure 3-5 Stages of qualitative data collection & analysis.
53 Figure 3-6 Curved-arrow formalism interview probes. 55 Figure 3-7 Key for interview probe number one. 56 Figure 3-8 Key for interview probe number two. 57 Figure 3-9 Key for interview probe number three.
57 Figure 3-10 Key for interview probe number four. 58 Figure 3-11 Structure of a thematic network .Page Figure 4-1 Distribution of course grades for PLTL and cPLTL comparison groups. 66 Figure 4-2 Distribution of course grades for PLTL and cPLTL comparison groups. 67 Figure 4-3 Emergent themes from student and peer leader interviews.
69 Figure 4-4 Distribution of discourse type in PLTL & cPLTL. 79 Figure 4-5 Frequency of revised Bloom’s Taxonomy-classified discourse by setting. 87 Figure 4-6 Toulmin’s Argumentation Scheme. 129 Figure 4-7 General scheme for problem-solving in organic chemistry (SPOC).
131 Figure 4-8 Detailed scheme for problem-solving in organic chemistry (SPOC). 132 xiv GLOSSARY Adobe Connect is a web conferencing program that provides the following features for synchronous online collaborations: voice communications; video; chat; simultaneous screen sharing; subgrouping; polling; screen recording; and whiteboard collaboration. Adobe Connect has been used in the cPLTL courses at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), Purdue University, and Florida International University (Mauser et al., 2011; McDaniel et al., 2013; Smith, Wilson, Banks, Zhu, & Varma- Nelson, 2014). Cyber Peer-Led Team Learning (cPLTL) is a synchronous online version of Peer-Led Team Learning in which 6-8 students work collaboratively to solve challenging problems that are aligned with the course content (Mauser et al., 2011; McDaniel et al., 2013; Smith et al.
DFW Rate is a course-level student performance indicator that is calculated from the number students in a course who earned grades of D/F or withdrew from the course divided by the total number of students. Oncourse, an online course management system invented by Dr. Ali Jafari’s and his research team at IUPUI, has been utilized on all eight Indiana University campuses (Jafari, 1999). Peer Leaders are undergraduate role models & facilitators of group work in PLTL workshops who are recent successful completers of the course with demonstrated communication and leadership skills (Gosser et al.
They “serve as a bridge between students and instructors” (Gafney & Varma-Nelson, 2007, p. Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) is an active learning pedagogy in which 8-10 students collaboratively solve challenging problems aligned with course content under the guidance of a trained peer leader (Eberlein et al.