Demystifying "Classroom Chemistry": The Role of the Interactive Learning Model

Academic success is aproduct of social as well as educationalfactors. Both must be addressed in order to meet the needs of students who may lack the necessary skills to succeed in college. Thispaper presents a study in which a personalized teaching style is integrated with opportunities for group interaction in an effort to create the positive classroom chemistry that encourages active student participation. The focus is on two introductory sociology classes; one was taught in the traditional manner, while the other incorporated efforts to enhance the participants' definitions of themselves as students. The study revealed that the academic environment can be altered deliberately to help students learn how to redefine their educational role in active terms, thereby increasing significantly their chances for success. This paper describes an attempt to create positive classroom chemistry by introducing an interactive learning model into one of two classes in a large (16,000 students) inner-city community college with a widely diversified student population. By the end of the first two weeks, the classes involved in this study consisted of 50 (control group) and 56 (experimental group) lower-division students, most of whom took the class to fulfill a general education requirement. There was a wide va