A Case of Early Positive Results in Student Gains: The Institute for Chemistry Literacy Through Computational Science MSP
1. Context of the Work
The Institute for Chemistry Literacy Through Computational Science (ICLCS) is a five-year NSF-funded Math and Science Partnership led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Department of Chemistry, College of Medicine, and National Center for Supercomputing Applications. The goals of the project, addressing secondary chemistry learning in rural schools, are to accomplish:
Participating rural high school chemistry teachers are undergoing an intensive year-round treatment for three years that includes a two week summer academy, intermittent "virtual" workshops, other occasional whole-group meetings, ongoing unit development and other activities via an interactive web portal, conference attendance and presentation opportunities, and work with individual challenges.
The focus of the presentation is on early results in student chemistry content gains whose teachers were in their first year of treatment, versus students of a control group of teachers.
- Improved teacher and student content acquisition in the context of present-day research,
- Increased teacher comfort with and use of computational and visualization tools in the classroom,
- Development of teacher leadership development in STEM and computational science education, and
- Related institutional change at the university and 9-12 educational partners engaged in the project.
Participating rural high school chemistry teachers are undergoing an intensive year-round treatment for three years that includes a two week summer academy, intermittent "virtual" workshops, other occasional whole-group meetings, ongoing unit development and other activities via an interactive web portal, conference attendance and presentation opportunities, and work with individual challenges.
The focus of the presentation is on early results in student chemistry content gains whose teachers were in their first year of treatment, versus students of a control group of teachers.
