Adapting a Student-Centered Chemistry Curriculum to a Large-Enrollment Context: Successes and Challenges

Passive, lecture-based forms of instruction are often ineffective in helping students develop deep conceptual understanding of scientific concepts. Student-centered forms of instruction based in a constructivist framework, where students are guided toward actively constructing their understanding, have been met with greater success. However, implementation of constructivist-based curricula and complementary teaching practices in large introductory college courses is often met with unique challenges. Here we describe and evaluate the scaling of a constructivist-based, studentcentered chemistry curriculum from its original implementation in a 24-seat small-enrollment course to a 96-seat large-enrollment course. Postinstruction test scores for the scaled up, student-centered course were intermediate between the large-enrollment traditional course and the small-enrollment studentcentered course, suggesting limited success of the scaling. We discuss barriers to scaling and future steps to improve the large-enrollment course. Our goal is to inform similar transformations to studentcentered curricula and practices in other large-enrollment courses.