Maximizing Learning Efficiency in General Chemistry

Whether it comes in the form of employment to pay their way through school, or from volunteer hours for medical school applications, most modern students have significant demands on their time. There are only 24 hours in a day. Of those hours, there are only so many that a student can spend trying to learn general chemistry. This means we should assign activities that maximize the efficiency with which students learn. In this chapter, we examine the learning efficiency quotient - minutes learning divided by minutes studying - and present four methods to maximize this quotient for general chemistry students. The first section discusses active lecture practices, and the second section presents active homework assignments. In the third section, we describe active recitation practices, and in the fourth, active laboratory. These active learning practices maximize the efficiency of student learning while allowing them to construct declarative and procedural knowledge in a supportive manner that ultimately leads to superior content knowledge construction and improvement of scientific reasoning skills.