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Download fileThe American Chemical Society General Chemistry Performance Expectations Project: From Task Force to Distributed Process for Implementing Multidimensional Learning
journal contribution
posted on 2021-04-29, 15:09 authored by Samuel Pazicni, Donald J. Wink, Ashley Donovan, John A. Conrad, Joshua P. Darr, Rachel A. Morgan Theall, Dana L. Richter-Egger, Adrian Villalta-Cerdas, Deborah Rush WalkerThis contribution reports the process
and outcomes of a multiyear
effort that supported institutions in reforming general chemistry
using multidimensional learning approaches in the form of performance
expectations. Performance expectations are based on evidence-centered
assessment design principles and describe what learners should be
able to do with their knowledge, a subtle (but profound) shift from
traditional course learning goals. The effort grew from the recommendations
of a task force appointed in 2015 by the American Chemical Society’s
Division of Chemical Education and Society Committee on Education.
This task force recommended a participatory process for creating general
chemistry performance expectations that was distributed over, and
also coordinated across, multiple institutions. With support from
the ACS Education Division, this recommendation was enacted through
workshops which supported faculty in developing activities and assessments
that integrated content, science and engineering practices, and cross-cutting
conceptsa three-dimensional structure based on the National
Research Council report A Framework for K-12 Education. From these workshops, a group of faculty committed to implementing
three-dimensional performance expectations in their courses evolved.
In practice, these faculty found that their institutional work resulted
in designing learning performances that, while also three-dimensional,
were of narrower content focus than is typical of performance expectations.
This development process also led faculty to use the structures of
evidence-centered design and multidimensional learning to document
learning activity designs in new ways, generating a consensus activity
structure. As examples of how faculty used this consensus activity
structure as a new way to examine student learning and performances,
development artifacts from four of the participating institutions
is presented.