A Note To Faculty

These lessons are in a draft, beta-version form. Students find the lessons are helpful, but not all topics are currently covered, and they  are not edited to professional standards. 

 Critical comments are appreciated.  Please email  Feedback@ChemReview.NET .

Suggestions for Use

Some lessons may be suitable as assignments and support for both  “chemistry prep” and “general chemistry” courses.  Lessons may be used at NO cost by instructors, students, TA’s, and tutors during 2010-11.  

Appropriate lessons could be

       Posted as a resource for students on a website, syllabus, or whiteboard;

       Used by TAs in discussion sections or by tutors for students who are seeking help;

       Assigned to students as preparation for a lecture topic.   A announced short quiz at the start of class may encourage students to complete this preparation.   The author will supply modifiable quizzes on the ChemReview tutorial topics in an MSWord format by email upon request.

       Used as an assignment or recommendation in conjunction with a “one-time only re-test, with a point-penalty,” when students receive a poor grade on topics that are needed for the rest of the course.

Design and Intent

The goal of the ChemReview tutorials is to assist instructors by providing a review and practice of fundamentals that students can complete before class.  The tutorials are focused on math computation and chemistry calculations. 

The authors hope to provide instructors with more class time for chemistry.

Labs and demonstrations are the heart of chemistry, and they require the presence of an instructor.  Exploring strategies to solve complex problems benefits from the guidance of an instructor.  By moving into "self-study time" outside of class the review of math and basics, these lessons are aimed at increasing the time in class that can be devoted to demonstrations that engage students, as well as higher-level topics of the instructor's choosing.

The premise of the ChemReview lessons is that many first-year students simply do not have the background in math computation that is needed for success in the physical sciences. 

Research has found (www.mathematicallycorrect.com, see especially articles by Dr. David Klein) that since 1987, the  "NCTM-standard" Grade 3-12 math curricula adopted by several large states (and as a result by nearly all pre-college math textbook publishers) have strongly de-emphasized math computation.  The result is pressure on chemistry instructors to spend limited class time reviewing computation fundamentals needed for the physical sciences.  

These lessons are designed to fill-in the wide variety of gaps that may be found in the backgrounds of students in first-year classes.  The ChemReview lessons

• Provide assignments for students to do on their own, before class, to prepare for a topic.
• Include pretests so that students can skip what they know and focus on what they do not.

It is hoped that these lessons will

• Improve student success in first-year college chemistry, and

• Encourage more students to major in science and technical careers.

To teach initial fundamentals without use of instructor time, these lessons encourage a “high-structure” approach to problem solving.  Faculty and student assessment of this approach is found elsewhere on this website.