个人简介

B.S., 1975, Univ. of Manchester, England M.S., 1976, Univ. of Manchester, England Ph.D., 1978, Univ. of Manchester, England Professor, 1987-2012, Clemson University Lappan-Phillips Chair of Science Education AwardOrganizationDivisionLevel CodeType CodeStart DateEnd Date Achievement in Research for the Teaching and Learning of Chemistry.ACSProfessionalEducation2014 James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of ChemistryProfessionalEducation2013 MSU Lappan-Phillips Professor of Science EducationProfessionalEducation2013

研究领域

Chemistry Education

(Research Description PDF - 675 kb) Evidence based approaches to teaching, learning and assessment are the focus of Dr. Cooper’s research. Our goal is to characterize student thinking about major chemistry ideas and use this knowledge to improve teaching and learning. For example: Chemistry, Life, the Universe and Everything (CLUE) is a new NSF supported general chemistry curriculum that was developed in collaboration with Mike Klymkowsky (University of Colorado at Boulder). CLUE is based on three core ideas of chemistry - structure, properties and energy as three intertwined learning progressions that are developed simultaneously over the two semester course. CLUE represents a model for curriculum development based on five important questions: (i) What should students know and be able to do? (ii) In what order should they learn it? (iii) What do students bring with them to the course? (iv) What materials are best suited for different purposes? and (v) How can student understanding be assessed? Our research has focused on each of these questions. That is we are interested in characterizing the core concepts of chemistry and, by providing opportunities to use these ideas in the context of scientific practices we can describe what students should know and be able to do with that knowledge. For example we ask students to construct and use models to predict and explain chemical phenomena, to use data to support and develop arguments and to construct explanations about important ideas in chemistry. To do this we are designing evidence based learning progressions for the core ideas, structure, properties and energy using design-based research to investigate how students ideas about these concepts progress over time and folding this research back into the design of the curriculum. To design effective curricula we need to know what students bring to the table in terms of knowledge and science practices, and we also must understand how and why (under traditional curriculum structures) students develop ideas that are not scientifically sound. For example we have shown that for many students, when they consider how the molecular level structure of a substance can be used to predict macroscopic properties, their ideas are often a loosely woven tapestry of concepts, facts and skills, rather than a useful framework of ideas. We have used this work to design a more coherent approach to structure property relationships, and have shown that students who learn in this way are significantly better at both constructing and using structures to predict properties. We have followed these students through organic chemistry and find that the CLUE students are still significantly better than a matched cohort of students who learned general chemistry in a more traditional setting. Similarly our recent work on the central (and cross cutting concept of energy) has focused on how students think about energy in chemical systems, and this work has informed our learning progression for energy. We are also interested in developing formative assessment systems that allow students to construct (free form) structures, diagrams, and models, and to develop explanations for phenomena. Our system beSocratic (http://besocratic.chemistry.msu.edu) is designed to recognize and respond to student input. We are developing and assessing the effect of tutorials and formative assessment activities using beSocratic. Figure 1: Sankey diagram showing how CLUE and traditional students represent intermolecular forces as within or between molecules

近期论文

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Cooper, M., & Klymkowsky, M. (2013). Chemistry, Life, the Universe, and Everything: A new approach to general chemistry, and a model for curriculum reform. Journal of Chemistry Education, 90, 1116-1122. doi:10.1021/ed300456y Cooper, M. M. (2013). Chemistry and the Next Generation Science Standards. Journal of Chemical Education, 90, 679–680. doi:10.1021/ed400284c Cooper, M. M., Corley, L. M., & Underwood, S. M. (2013). An investigation of college chemistry students’ understanding of structure–property relationships. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 6, 699-721. doi:10.1002/tea.21093 Cooper, M. M., Underwood, S. M., & Hilley, C. Z. (2012). Development and validation of the implicit information from Lewis structures instrument (IILSI): Do students connect structures with properties? Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 13, 195–200. doi:10.1039/C2RP00010E Cooper, M. M., Underwood, S. M., Hilley, C. Z., & Klymkowsky, M. W. (2012). Development and Assessment of a Molecular Structure and Properties Learning Progression. Journal of Chemical Education, 89, 1351–1357. doi:10.1021/ed300083a Grove, N. P., Cooper, M. M., & Cox, E. L. (2012). Does Mechanistic Thinking Improve Student Success in Organic Chemistry? Journal of Chemical Education, 89, 850–853. doi:10.1021/ed200394d Trujillo, C., Cooper, M. M., & Klymkowsky, M. W. (2012). Using graph-based assessments within Socratic tutorials to reveal and refine students’ analytical thinking about molecular networks. Biochemistry and molecular biology education, 40(2), 100–107. doi:10.1002/bmb.20585 Grove, N. P., Cooper, M. M., & Rush, K. M. (2012). Decorating with Arrows: Toward the Development of Representational Competence in Organic Chemistry. Journal of Chemical Education, 89(7), 844–849. doi:10.1021/ed2003934 Sandi-Urena, S., Cooper, M. M., Gatlin, T. A., & Bhattacharyya, G. (2011). Students’ experience in a general chemistry cooperative problem based laboratory. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 12, 434. doi:10.1039/c1rp90047a Sandi‐Urena, S., Cooper, M. M., & Stevens, R. H. (2011). Enhancement of Metacognition Use and Awareness by Means of a Collaborative Intervention. International Journal of Science Education, 33, 323–340. doi:10.1080/09500690903452922 Cooper, M. M., Grove, N., Underwood, S. M., & Klymkowsky, M. W. (2010). Lost in Lewis Structures: An Investigation of Student Difficulties in Developing Representational Competence. Journal of Chemical Education, 87(8), 869–874. doi:10.1021/ed900004y