Making chemistry courses and labs more engaging and accessing science lab spaces – regardless of physical ability – are becoming easier to accomplish, thanks to Faculty of Science initiatives sponsored by Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) grants.

In the Department of Chemistry, Tihana Mirkovic, an assistant professor, and Hovig Kouyoumdjian, an associate professor who is also the associate dean of curriculum and pedagogy, are developing modules using e-learning tool Adobe Captivate to improve students’ learning experiences. Meanwhile, biology professors Tamara Kelly and Paula Wilson and their colleagues – project manager Jessi Nelson, accessibility expert Ainsley Latour and educational development specialist Ashley Nahornick – are identifying and supporting improvements that make labs more accessible.

Kouyoumdjian first identified the potential of Adobe Captivate as a tool for the generation of an interactive learning environment in chemistry classes. Together with Mirkovic, the pair recognized that the laboratory experience through pre-laboratory activities in undergraduate classes could be substantially improved by leveraging the multimedia learning process that could be incorporated into modules generated in Adobe Captivate.

“Our goal is to allow students to integrate their conceptual and procedural understanding of their labs through active learning opportunities. We hope that the newly developed modules, featuring slides, videos, hotspots, 360-degree navigation, software simulations and knowledge check assessments, will provide a learning environment that motivates our students and maximizes their learning potential,” Mirkovic said.

“We aim for students to stay engaged, even when the material is presented virtually,” said Kouyoumdjian. “Now, we possess an e-learning tool with an interactive component that complements the static elements of the course. It is applicable for both blended and online courses.”

The pair also collaborated with an instructional designer to craft customizable templates to help with the process of repurposing and reusing the modules across various courses.”

The professors have has initiated a pilot in the courses CHEM 2020 (Introductory Organic Chemistry I) and CHEM 3001 (Experimental Chemistry II) this term. “We hope to gather valuable information from the initial student experience and feedback collected from Adobe Captivate activities and linked self-reflection surveys,” Mirkovic said. During the summer, they will reflect on the pilot’s successes and explore the reusability of the created templates.

They are optimistic that the new software will contribute to student engagement, leading to increased student motivation and greater retention.

Meanwhile, the accessibility team is moving forward with its own initiative to improve – in a different way – the accessibility of biology, chemistry and physics labs for students in the Faculty.

“Paula and I have directed labs, and something we come up against regularly is accommodation,” said Kelly, the project lead and the Pedagogical Innovation Chair, Science Education. “Student Accessibility Services typically addresses lectures, but has limited expertise to support providing clear accommodations for labs.”

Added Wilson: “Students with accessibility issues have the burden of negotiating with their professors for every lab, and it’s exhausting. Also, even if professors are eager to assist, they aren’t experts in accommodation.

“In addition, by the time faculty members get a letter about accommodating a student, it may be the second or third week of the term, which leaves no time for finding and arranging creative solutions.”

The group plans to survey Faculty of Science students and faculty to learn more about needs and accommodations that work. Latour and Nelson developed a checklist of barriers to accessibility in labs and then, with Nahornick, toured first-year science laboratories with the technicians who run the labs. They looked for barriers and what was missing to make accommodation easier.

“There were a lot of things that were quick fixes, so Ashley emailed the lab managers to suggest changes to make before the start of the term,” said Kelly. “These included the readability of signage, repairs to broken automatic doors, among other things.”

The team also brought in Pamela Millett, an audiologist from the Faculty of Education, to determine what the sound issues might be for those with hearing concerns.

“There is a lot of ambient sound in labs, from fans and other equipment, that make it hard for students to hear instructions,” said Nahornick. “Repairing or using their microphones is an easy fix.”

The next step will be to create professional development support for instructors, technicians and teaching assistants, so they understand how to best support accessibility in labs.

Wilson said they would also like to prepare a series of recommendations for the Faculty. “Some issues may require infrastructure changes that will require additional funding. We want to take away the pressure on instructors to handle this on their own by making changes where we can and sharing best practices,” she explained. “Our aim is to make it easier for all students to have valuable lab experiences that meet course outcomes.”

Kelly added, “If we have a clear understanding in advance about what is needed, that’s a big step. Some things must be personalized, but there are some general things we can implement for our students. Students with disabilities are often driven away from science in high school because of barriers, and we don’t want to be part of that cycle. We want to enable people.

“For a lot of students, their first experience in a lab turns them onto science. We’ll lose talent if they don’t feel as if they can function in this setting.”

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“There are big changes in study skills, life skills and learning skills and students need to acquire the ability to reflect and adjust,” said Skelton, an assistant professor, teaching stream, in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at 91ŃÇÉ«.

In the United States, it is quite common to find first-year seminar courses, taken for credit by first-semester undergraduates. These courses have a small faculty-student ratio (30:1) and focus on assisting students to develop practical and intellectual skills that will enhance their university experience. Such courses are not prevalent in Canada, so Skelton began pondering how a Canadian model might look.

“All over the 91ŃÇÉ« campus, there is experience in helping students develop these skills, but how do we get students to take advantage of these resources?” he said.

His solution was to develop stand-alone modules that could easily fit into a first-year course. The models address three types of student needs: mathematical skills (how to learn from homework problems, effective mathematical communication, multiple representations and other aids); study skills (avoiding procrastination, notetaking and the neuroscience of learning); and, life skills (managing academic stress, how to send an email and combating perfectionism).

It is a project that has been three years in the making. The first year was funded by the Junior Faculty Fund in the Faculty of Science. Skelton had three summer students work with him to develop proof of concept. Feedback from the first group of students led Skelton to modify the offerings. The second year was funded by an Academic Innovation Fund (AIF) grant and was focused on balancing the cost and benefit to the students to create a product they would find valuable. Students in the second group perceived that the value of the modules had significantly increased, while the cost relative to the value had decreased significantly. In other words, the redesign process was effective in better optimizing student motivation and effort.

“I wanted them to be of benefit to students in terms of time and emotional energy and wanted to determine how to advertise them to students and how they would figure into a student’s grade,” Skelton said. “In doing so, I realized they were built for me and my teaching style and weren’t transferable to other professors.”

The third year of his project, funded by a grant from  (and the 91ŃÇÉ« Science Scholars Award program), focused on making the modules suitable for use by any faculty member and on balancing the cost and benefit to the faculty members so more would adapt the product to their courses.

“If you, as a faculty member, have an interest in helping the students in your course with these learning skills, I have a product that you can adapt to your teaching style,” Skelton said.

Data were collected over each year of the project and have produced interesting results. There was, for example, a significant correlation between the number of modules completed proactively and the final grade in the course. This gives support to the advice that faculty often share with students: it’s a good idea to set small goals if you want to see long-term change. Trying to submit just one more thing proactively is a perfectly reasonable goal. Each proactive submission is associated with an increase in average academic performance, so start small and build from there.

Jermin Bates, a 2020 alumna with a BA in mathematics and education, spent two years working with Skelton in developing the modules for e-class, turning them into portable modules and tracking the cost and benefit to students.

“It was great to see the results of the modules and how effective they were,” she said. “Especially after we redeveloped them, we saw an increase in overall student grades. I wish I’d had these modules as a first-year student. It’s tough for a lot of us as we go through it.”

Skelton is currently using the modules with 1,200 first-year students and will give the modules a final tweak, once he sees the impact they have in the classroom. In February 2022, the modules will be posted online on the  website, so they are available to faculty anywhere. In creating the eCampus Ontario modules, Skelton reached out to colleagues at the University of Guelph and Western University to collaborate.

“It was nice to bring perspectives from other universities to the product,” Skelton said. “Although the student demographics there might differ, all students need these skills.”

The modules are designed so that students can do them independently or as part of a course.

“Faculty can accompany them with instructional activities and make them part of the grade,” Skelton said. “For example, they can ask students to do five of 20 possible activities and make each of them count for one per cent of the grade. You don’t want there to be such high stakes that they infringe on the course content.”

He thoroughly enjoys teaching first-year students and hopes that these modules will smooth their journeys from incoming students to graduates.

“It’s such fun to see them transition and grow,” Skelton said. “By fourth year, they are completely different people.”

Bates, too, is a different person after working with Skelton. She had previously planned to pursue a degree in education but is now considering attending graduate school to obtain a more research-based degree.

“This opened my eyes to the possibilities of research,” said Bates. “I don’t think I realized how broad it was. This had a bigger impact on me than I was expecting.”

By Elaine Smith and featured in the Jan 2022 Issue of .

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