Peer-Led Team Learning: General Chemistry

The second edition of Peer-Led Team Learning General Chemistry maintains the underlying philosophy and approach of the first edition, i.e., active learning in peer-led groups engages students in the process of learning chemistry. This engagement results in improved understanding of chemistry concepts and the process of science. The peer-led group model also helps students develop the communication and teamwork skills that are critical in the twenty-first century workplace.

The second edition of Peer-Led Team Learning General Chemistry maintains the underlying philosophy and approach of the first edition, i.e., active learning in peer-led groups engages students in the process of learning chemistry. This engagement results in improved understanding of chemistry concepts and the process of science. The peer-led group model also helps students develop the communication and teamwork skills that are critical in the twenty-first century workplace.

The second edition is also designed to be used as a workbook. It is purposely the size of a notebook in the hope that you, the chemistry student, will carry it around and use it frequently. It has ample space for you to record your notes and questions about the material. And, most important, it includes space to record the results of group work-the solutions to the Workshop problems and the thinking behind those solutions. The Workshop problems reflect the breadth of scientific problem solving-namely, the use of flowcharts, model building, simulations, and estimations-to help you understand and apply chemistry concepts. Week by week, you will be creating your own solutions guide that will be full of your thoughts and reflections on the problems you’ve solved. It will have a record of the logic that you and your classmates used to figure out the answers, and the process you used to search out the solutions. You can refer to your solutions guide throughout the semester just as you refer to your lecture notes. You can use it as a study guide for examinations and a reference for subsequent chemistry courses. This is a resource that you will keep long after you’ve traded in your used textbook.

The changes in the second edition were inspired by feedback from reviewers and the students and faculty who have used the first edition over the past five years. We have adopted their suggestions to make the book more user friendly and to simplify the language and writing style. We have carefully examined the entire text, rewriting when necessary, to ensure that all content is presented in a theoretically accurate and pedagogically sound manner. By way of example, we have provided an improved and conceptually more correct treatment of enthalpy of formation in Unit 7 and have introduced the correct treatment for the kinetics of the steady state in Unit 17. Additionally, the kinetics workshop now includes new simulation parameters that demonstrate that a steady state requires neither a slow first step nor an intermediate of particularly low concentration. We have divided the text into smaller, bite-sized pieces that relate directly to the problems in the self-test and the workshop. We have changed the self-test format from a single test at the end of the unit to several smaller tests that follow each bite-sized section of text. We hope that this new configuration provides opportunities to think about the concept and to self-assess understanding before proceeding further.

The book’s 24 chapters (workbook units) parallel the sequence of a typical general chemistry textbook. Each unit ends with a workshop that has more problems than can be done in a single group meeting. This was deliberately done to give instructors the ability to choose the problems that best meet the needs of the local curriculum. Each workshop includes numerous suggestions to facilitate collaborative work on the problems. While the workbook is tailored for a Peer-Led Team Learning environment, it can also be used as a supplement in those traditional lecture courses in which instructors encourage collaborative learning.

We encourage anyone who has comments or feedback about the text or interest in Peer-Led Team Learning to contact the authors.

We want to thank all the individuals who have made contributions to the workbook over the past few years. We are grateful to all of the students and group leaders who have made contributions throughout the life of the Workshop Project. We are particularly grateful to the National Science Foundation, Division of Undergraduate Education, for its support for the Workshop Project through the Chemistry Systemic Change Initiative and National Dissemination Program. For more information about Peer-Led Team Learning and the Workshop Project, visit the project’s official website at www.pltl.org.

Finally, we would like to express our appreciation to Pearson Prentice-Hall for their generous support of the dissemination of this text as part of their educational innovation program.

V. S. Strozak (vstrozak@gc.cuny.edu) M.S. Cracolice D.K. Gosser (gosser@sci.ccny.cuny.edu) New York, NY and Missoula, MT January 2005