The first semester CHEM 110 story


CHEM 110 is a first year course featuring organic chemistry, acid-base equilibrium and kinetics. It is taken by students advancing in chemistry and also by students enrolled in competitive Biomedical Science degrees. In 2006 920 students sat the final exam. In 2007 1089 students sat the final exam.
In 2008 1065 students sat the final exam. In 2010 1103 students sat the final exam. In 2010 all lab modules were revised with particular attention to the first one which had caused problems in the 2009 academic year.

IN 2006 : BestChoice requirement included 4 assignments (each at 0.5 course marks) and 5 pre-labs
Students are not given marks toward their course total for the Prelabs, but their supervisor checks that they have completed this and adjusts their lab mark if they have not done so.
In 2007: Increased BestChoice requirement by adding 2 more assignment modules.
In 2008: Altered BestChoice requirement by deleting 2 assignment modules (IR and NMR) and replacing these by a Spectroscopy worksheet and another module on Blocks 4 and 5 Revision. These new modules were overview modules that integrated various aspects of the lecture course.

Usage outcome:
In 2007 Compulsory modules: Despite the higher requirement, a larger percentage of the students completed the compulsory work than had done in 2006. The same thing happened in 2008.
A correct answer in BestChoice gets a BC Mark. These are NOT the same as the course marks given for completion of modules above. In order to gain a total of 5 course marks in2007, students had to choose the correct BestChoice answer 750 times.

For CHEM 110
first semester in 		Compulsory BC marks available average % gained
2006 538 84
2007 719 96
2008 781 95
2010 822 98

Noncompulsory modules: BestChoice is a large resource and there are a significant number of modules that are not compulsory work. The increase in required work also had the effect of increasing the number of non-compulsory marks gained on average.

For CHEM 110
first semester in 		Average BC marks
obtained/available 		Average total BC marks
obtained/available
Compulsory Non-compulsory
2006 489  /  538 364  /  2431 853  /  2969
2007 702  /  719 356  / 2067 1068  /  2786
2008 739 / 781 534 / 2056 1273 / 2837
2009 751 / 793 613 / 2627 1364 / 3420
2010 796 / 822 790 / 2719 1586 / 3541

Student-entered feedback outcome:
There is a survey at the end of every module in BestChoice. Students may rate the modules (worst 1 to 6 best) and enter comments. The response rates below are based on total module completions for students in this course.

Comments: Although the response rate is somewhat lower than in 2007 due to the increased number of completed modules, the percentage of comments that were compliments is up considerably.

CHEM 110 Comments Number entered Response rate % Compliments % Criticisms % Suggestions
2006 403 3.5% 70 10 20
2007 373 2% 70 11 19
2008 450   72 11 17
2009 319   58 20 22
2010 693   73 12 15

Module Ratings: The response rate is somewhat lower in 2007, but the average of the ratings is significantly up, as is the % positives and the percentage of the top rating.

CHEM 110 Module ratings responses average/6 response rate* % positives (4, 5, 6) % 6's
2006 3417 4.9 30% 87% 38%
2007 4132 4.9 22% 86% 39%
2008 3474 4.8 85% 39%
2009 1949 4.8 83% 37%
2010 705 4.8 87% 32%

Conclusions

Increase in compulsory requirement leads to
no change in survey responses statistics
significant increase in amount of noncompulsory activity