Students’ Reflections about their Learning in an Online Chemistry Course and its Relationship with Final Grades

Event: Undergraduate Research Symposium
Date: May 18, 2019
Location: UCI Student Center

Presenter: Narges Goshayeshi Safa
Mentor: Fernando Rodriguez

Title: Students’ Reflections about their Learning in an Online Chemistry Course and its Relationship with Final Grades

Abstract

​The goal of this study is to examine the students’ learning experiences in an online preparatory Chemistry course at UC Irvine to understand: 1) what their overall thoughts were related to positive and negative aspects of their learning, and 2) how their responses were related to their final course grade. Students were asked to write about what was positive and negative for their learning. Using the written answers for these survey questions, we will code the responses into positive and negative aspects of their experiences. Each response will be broken down to smaller sub-codes and each specific code would be coded as either 1 (if the student’s comment reflected a code) or 0 (if it did not reflect a code). Using a t-test to compare differences in students’ responses on learning outcomes, we expect to find that students who are more positive in their responses about the course (e.g., enjoyed the lecture videos and assignments) will have higher final grades. In contrast, students who have more negative responses will have significantly lower grades. Finally, students who comment that they enjoy working on their own pace and are able to manage their time in the online curse will have higher final grades in the course.