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Several years ago, I decided that I would no long simply accept having poor attendance in my large classes (200 - 300) people. I did not want to start taking attendance per se, so I instituted giving pop quizzes every week or so throughout the semester.
I did remember how I felt about such quizzes when I was in college - didn't care for them - and so I made them user-friendly. They are open book, open notes and "talk-with your neighbor" quizzes. Students use their own paper. They enjoy the activity and the noise level in the class rises as they teach each other the material. I always give them at the end of the lecture. Everyone turns in their own paper and I return them the next period. They are very easy to grade. Grading time is less than 1 hour, even for 250 students.
I normally give 13 quizzes and drop 3. This semester I changed the syllabus and gave 15 and dropped 4. The change was because two of our Chemical Education Master's students wanted my student's to participate in their studies, so I gave them quiz credit for doing so.
The purpose of quizzes is multi-faceted:
- I do use the information for attendance. I can easily see which students are attending, which is useful when advisors call.
- They keep my attendance up. Students never know when I will give one, and it even becomes a little game between us as students play the odds of whether or not I will be giving one that day. I always give one on the last day before a holiday to reward students for coming to class. It seems that students need to be taught that coming to class is a useful exercise. Years ago, we had out-side tutors including the infamous "Mr. Bill" telling our First Year Chemistry students that they did not have to attend class, just come to him. Now, attendance is much better.
- During the quizzes, there is active learning going on. Students are wrestling with the material, asking each other, teaching each other. This ten minutes or so is very well spent.
- I have the ability to catch the small mistakes and misconceptions that people are making and correct them. The quizzes are returned the next period and the students have the opportunity to learn with little risk to their grade. If they were to miss the concept on an exam, the penalty would be many times greater.
- For Quiz 1, I ask them to take a free version of the Myers-Briggs test, called the Jung Topology Test. This is found HERE.. Every student if they chose takes the quiz, emails me their 4 letters describing their personality, and tells what they thought of the exercise. This serves several purposes: They learn something about themselves, become less frightened about this class, and learn that when they email me, I always email back. I gather the data, which I've been doing for several years, which reminds me of how diverse my students are in their learning styles, which keeps me on my toes for including different teaching styles in my class. You can find the results of this semester's data HERE. This information is shared with my students every semester. I am an INTJ and this helps them understand where I am coming from as well.
- Quiz 2 is an Information Card with their picture attached. I thought about not continuing with this practice, but after speaking with my student workers (a great source of honest information about student thinking) I have continued doing this for many years. The students like knowing that I care about who they are even if I really never learn most of their names. The data card includes name, hometown, phone number, email address, how much chemistry they've had and I ask them to tell me something special about themselves.
Here are the questions I have asked this semester. Sometimes after I ask the questions, I realize that most students are stuggling with the concept since they were just exposed to the material that same lecture period. I then give hints to help them on their way. Students are more interested in listening to explanations of concepts when they have to apply them immediately in a quiz.....
Quiz 3: A volume of liquid, A, has a specific gravity of 0.899 and contains 2.00 x 1022 atoms of A. How many milliliters of liquid do you have? The atomic weight of A is 75.0 g/mol.
Quiz 4: Identify the following compounds as acid, base or salt and and tell me if it is soluble or insoluble. CHOOH, (CH3)2NH, Cu(OH)2, CuCO3, (NH4)3PO4, LiOH, H2SO4, Li2CO3.
Quiz 5: Complete the reaction, then write out the formula unit equation, total ionic equation and net ionic equation for
Na3PO4 + Ba(CH3COO)2 -->
Don't forget to identify the phase with (aq) and (s); don't forget the charges on the ions.
Quiz 6:Name or give the formula for CaSO2, CuNO4, iron(III) hypoiodite, ammonium perphosphate. Some of these compounds are imaginary.
Quiz 7:(a) Write the sharthand notation for the ground state electron configuration for Ni and At (b) Write an acceptable set of 4 quantum numbers for the last electron to be placed into an atom of Ni and At.
Quiz 8: Give the oxidation numbers for each element in NaCl, NaH and NH3.
Quiz 9: Draw the 3-D representation for BF3.
Quiz 10: For OF2 and PF4-, do the following:
- Draw the Lewis dot structure
- Give the number of regions of high electron density around the center atom.
- How many lone pairs of electrons are on the center atom?
- What is the hybridization of the center atom?
- What is the electronic geometry around the center atom?
- What are the ideal bond angles around the center atom?
- What is the molecular or ionic geometry?
- Does the compound or ion have a dipole moment?
Quiz 11: What is the concentration of salt formed when 50.0 mL of 0.200 M H2CO3 reacts with 70.0 mL of 0.300 M NaOH?
Quiz 12: Balance the following redox equation in acidic solution:
Cr2O72- + H2S --> Cr3+ + S
Quiz 13: Calculate the heat required to change 10.0 g of water at -30oC to 140oC, given the following information: The specific heats of water as a solid, liquid and gas are 2.09 J/goC, 4.18oC and 2.03oC, respectively. The heat of fusion of water at OoC is 334 J/g and the heat of vaporization of water at 100oC is 2260 J/g.
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