Editorial

pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc

Teaching General Chemistry and Making a Dierence

Norbert J. Pienta*
Department of Chemistry, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2556, United States
ABSTRACT: The expectations for introductory chemistry classes involve dierent priorities for the students and instructors.
Students expect a course to meet their programmatic needs, to maintain their interest, and to be easily achievable. How
instructors have met these expectations has probably changed over the last several decades, although instruction has not kept up
with our knowledge about how students learn. A change in strategies is suggested.
KEYWORDS: General Public, First-Year Undergraduate/General, Curriculum

general chemistry course as it was in his career. Perhaps, it is

not surprising that a nuclear-rst curriculum appeals to me:
what better way to justify the need to count atomic particles
and to justify the existence of neutrons to neophytes of the
subject? And 40+ years ago, it was enough to keep me
interested in chemistry.
One does not specialize in general chemistry in graduate
school. Organic chemistry became my interest and provided me
with a dissertation topic and the opportunity for an academic
career. The occasion to teach general chemistry came a short
time after observing a heated discussion between two
colleagues: an organic chemist blamed the general chemistry
instructor because he felt that students knew nothing about
acidbase chemistry when they started the organic sequence.
How could that be? The best way to nd out was to have the
experience of teaching both. An opportunity was provided by
that colleague at the University of Arkansas, Wally Cordes,
another exemplary instructor of introductory courses and
faculty mentor in the practical aspects of teaching. (It is with
deep sadness that I report his recent passing.) Having been
taught the traditional acidbase content in general chemistry,
these students were still observed to be decient in understanding in subsequent semesters when they became students
of organic chemistry. Being cognizant of that problem alone
apparently did not resolve the issue.
Is it sucient just to have interesting teachers in a successful
general chemistry program? In fact, did your Editor learn very
much in his general chemistry courses or are these just nostalgic
memories of the way it was? Did our instructors speak about
us in the same way we describe our classes: not suciently
motivated and struggling to be successful? Readers can scan the
Journal for periodic reports and commentaries about each
generation of students since the rst issues in 1924. One of
those reports is likely about your student days, leading me to
suggest that it never really was the way it used to be.
Fortunately, we can move beyond the past and, with the
knowledge about how students learn that has been gained in
the last several decades, make some changes based on
evidence.4 Chemistry is dicult, even the basic concepts and
skills in general chemistry. Conceptual understanding and
problem solving goes beyond algorithmic exercises.5,6 Students

t a recent seminar visit, an undergraduate student asked

several questions about the early years of my education:
why choose chemistry as a major, whether general chemistry
played a signicant role, and whether high school chemistry was
an inspiration. Your Editor has previously admitted that an
adolescent interest in combustion, particularly colorful railroad
ares, had a more formative role than my high school chemistry
teacher, who was perhaps even more colorful but from a
completely dierent perspective. Chemistry seemed more
interesting than cutting up formaldehyde-soaked critters or
memorizing taxonomies, the most persistent memories retained
from those limited experiences with the biological sciences.
Classical physics did not seem as alluring because topics such as
motion and gravity oered little mystery; your Editor might be
challenged to solve one now, even after what seemed like an
entire semester of parabolic motion problems, mostly in the
form of airplanes bombing trains. It was not until the latter of
the four required semesters that other physical phenomena
appeared as questions: exactly where the electricity could be
found in a power grid; why people rarely pushed with a rope;
and where to buy frictionless pulleys.
Student success in general chemistry is relevant to my recent
administrative duties in these courses. Indeed, it is currently
part of my career. However, my personal experiences in the rst
semester of this course sequence were not particularly inspired
by the circumstances. The text was Mahans University
Chemistry1 and recent students who complain about current
textbooks might liken it to reading the phone book. (If you are
young and have no experience with the latter, you can get a
reasonable idea from the description on Wikipedia.2) For a
voracious reader, pages lled with only text were not the
problem; the book or instructor never seemed to convince me
that the assigned problems were important or relevant to
anything. Nonetheless, an upperclassman in my residence hall
convinced me that chemistry was superior to computer science,
a subject that had caught my interest. In an alternate universe,
this manuscript might be about the importance of curly
brackets in writing code. But after careful reection and
boosting some self-determination, the second semester of
general chemistry became the next challenge. For this course,
an inspired teacher, John Huizinga, made all the dierence.
Thus, the New York Times report of his recent passing3 is noted
here with sadness. Nuclear chemistry was important in that
2014 American Chemical Society and
Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

Published: March 11, 2014

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Journal of Chemical Education

Editorial

need multiple exposures to ideas, and every one of those

opportunities has to involve the best chances for learning; they
need to be challenged, to think about the ideas, and to discuss
them.7 As a community, we need to revise our strategies and
practices to replace traditional lecture, laboratories that simply
conrm facts, and assessments based on exercises chosen
simply because the questions are easy to create.8 We can strive
to make general chemistry interesting, but the next generation
of students will judge us as instructors based on best practices
that involve active learning and critical thinking.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Corresponding Author

*E-mail: norbert-pienta@jce.acs.org.
Notes

Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not
necessarily the views of the ACS.

REFERENCES

(1) Mahan, B. H. University Chemistry; Addison-Wesley Publishing

Co.: Reading, MA, 1970.
(2) For the description of a phonebook or telephone directory, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_directory (accessed Feb
2014).
(3) For the New York Times obituary of John R. Huizinga, see http://
www.nytimes.com/2014/01/30/science/john-r-huizenga-physicist-atfore-of-nuclear-era-dies-at-92.html?_r=0 (access Feb 2014).
(4) For one summary of evidenced-based practice, see the National
Academy of Sciences Discipline-Based Education Research Report:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13362 (accessed Feb
2014).
(5) Wheatley, G. H. Problem Solving in School Mathematics, MEPS
Technical Report 84.01; School Mathematics and Science Center,
Purdue University: West Lafayette, IN, 1984.
(6) (a) Bodner, G. M.; Domin, D. S. Mental Models: The Role of
Representations in Problem Solving in Chemistry. Univ. Chem. Educ.
2000, 4 (1), 2430. (b) Domin, D.; Bodner, G. Using Students
Representations Constructed during Problem Solving To Infer
Conceptual Understanding. J. Chem. Educ. 2012, 89 (7), 837843.
(c) Bhattacharyya, G.; Bodner, G. M. It Gets Me to the Product:
How Students Propose Organic Mechanisms. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82
(9), 14021407.
(7) For a relevant discussion, see: (a) Cooper, M. M.; Underwood, S.
M.; Hilley, C. Z. Development and Validation of the Implicit
Information from Lewis Structures Instrument (IILSI): Do Students
Connect Structures with Properties? Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. 2012, 13
(3), 195200. (b) Cooper, M. M.; Grove, N.; Underwood, S. M.;
Klymkowsky, M. W. Lost in Lewis Structures: An Investigation of
Student Difficulties in Developing Representational Competence. J.
Chem. Educ. 2010, 87 (8), 869874. (c) Lafarge, D. L.; Morge, L. M.;
Meheut, M. M. A New Higher Education Curriculum in Organic
Chemistry: What Questions Should Be Asked? J. Chem. Educ. 2014, 91
(2), 173178.
(8) Content maps and tools for programmatic assessment relating to
undergraduate general and organic chemistry courses are available; see:
(a) Holme, T.; Murphy, K. The ACS Exams Institute Undergraduate
Chemistry Anchoring Concepts Content Map I: General Chemistry. J.
Chem. Educ. 2012, 89 (6), 721723. (b) Raker, J.; Holme, T.;
Murphy, K. The ACS Exams Institute Undergraduate Chemistry
Anchoring Concepts Content Map II: Organic Chemistry. J. Chem.
Educ. 2013, 90 (11), 14431445.

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