Chemistry Professor Accidentally Taught The Wrong Course For Months

[n2doc]

A chemistry professor at Houston-area Lonestar College allegedly taught students the wrong material for the majority of a semester, according to a local news station's investigative report.

Lonestar student Lauren Firmin told KHOU that she enrolled in and believed she was taking an "Intro to Chemistry" course in Fall 2013. However, the self-identified straight-A student realized something was wrong when she failed every test in the class, she said.

"I was getting 40's on every test. I studied as hard as I could, did everything in my power to try," Firmin told KHOU.

According to Firmin, Lonestar chemistry teacher Thao Shirley Nguyen admitted to the entire class that she had accidentally been teaching a more advanced general chemistry curriculum. "In short, Firmin says Nguyen told the class that she had NOT been teaching them the introductory course in chemistry that they originally signed up for, but an advanced course in chemistry," KHOU reports.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chemistry-professor-accidentally-taught-wrong-course-2014-3

[Baitball Blogger]

1. At least the teacher showed up.

I took an on-line course where the only person that was available to answer questions was an intern, and the questions on the test didn't match up to any of the textbook material.

[dlwickham]

3. Online courses suck

I was taking an online biology course and never once got feedback from the instructor on assignments that I turned in

I dropped it and complained about the instructor

[exboyfil]

5. Hit or miss on these courses

Some are very good and expect a lot from the students. Others are a joke. There should probably be an audit which goes on in these courses. Everything is online, and i probably could audit up to five courses an hour to determine whether appropriate content was presented, appropriate assessments were given, and meaningful feedback was done. It probably should be part of an accreditation review.

[Baitball Blogger]

6. That's all you can do. Is complain.

There's a great student critique site where the kids just trash bad teachers.

[dlwickham]

15. I've looked at those sites

I doubt anyone from a college takes those comments seriously. I had an English instructor years ago who everyone thought was the best and she was. Someone had just trashed her on one of those sites. It was obviously someone who didn't do the work required to get a good grade.

[davidpdx]

17. It depends on the school

There are obvious scams out there, too many to name. I'm doing a doctorate online and I've had both good and bad instructors. The thing about online is you have less of a support network (including classmates) to contact. With Facebook and other means it is possible, but it takes a lot more time and effort to interact with others. It also requires setting a schedule and doing more on your own. For doctoral level classes it's not a problem as most of it is reading and writing anyway.

When I was doing my master's, the school I went to used multiple format classes: weekly on campus, compressed weekends on campus, and online. I did a few classes online and a few compressed weekend, but most on campus.

[justabob]

2. wtf

What a fucked up situation. I feel bad for those students. The school's chosen way of dealing with it is backasswards too. They say they are basically inflating all the grades. How are those students going to fare in the next chem class when their intro was so fucked up?! How can the school just pump up the grades? I get it they don't want to refund and make everyone retake the course especially if the students are just getting a science credit and not using the class as a pre-req, but really.... SO fucked up, all the way around.

[exboyfil]

4. You can only hope it was a general

survey course which was not a prerequisite for any other. Just a liberal arts exposure to the topic. That might explain why the students were clueless as to what was happening. They may never have had a decent chemistry course in high school (I have a story about my high school physics course taught for the first time by an "engineer" - I always wonder where she got her degree from.).

Given what they went through they probably "earned" their grade and retained about as much chemistry as those who typically take the course anyway.

[Aerows]

8. If she was teaching advanced inorganic chemistry

or organic chemistry and students couldn't keep up, they certainly don't have the foundations whatsoever. I face-rolled inorganic chemistry in my first year because I had taken advanced chemistry in high school. If I wouldn't have had that and strolled into chemistry like most everyone else had? I would have probably been crying.

[LisaL]

11. No, it was just general chemistry from what has been reported.

Instead of intro to chemistry she was teaching general chemistry.

[exboyfil]

14. She is currently teaching

General Chemistry II at Houston Community College. If she was teaching the same course to students who did not have high school chemistry, I can see how they were confused. If it was General Chemistry I then they might have had a chance at understanding. My daughter took General Chemistry I after a solid high school chemistry class and did very well, but she had several fellow students - some who never had chemistry and had been out of school for a period of time - that really struggled. I can see that happening in this case as well. Sounds like not much of a support structure for the students.

[Aerows]

16. Exactly

I breezed through Honors Inorganic Chemistry as a Freshmen ... but I had already had two years of it in high school.

Strolling in on the first day not having a clue, I could imagine it was rough. Combined with students determined to succeed, but not having the foundation to do so, that's really ugly.

Probably none of them had Calculus (or at least higher-end Algebra), either, which is presumed for acceleration of reactions/pH dilution/etc.

[fujiyama]

7. Wouldn't there have been course notes or a book that corresponded with the lecture materials?

If they didn't match up, any half way attentive student would have realized something is wrong.

I'm really confused how this could go on as long as it did without another student realizing. It reflects poorly on the students as well that not one caught this or that several students didn't bring this issue up to the faculty head or the department dean within a week or two of the class starting. Or maybe they did and nothing was done.

Either way the article reveals very little.

[LisaL]

10. Sounds like the students were doing poorly to the point they were not even able to realize something

was not right. Non science majors, I presume, with very little understanding of what they were supposed to have been studying.

[exboyfil]

12. I don't know the course

but here is one listed:


CHEM 1405 - 1101 Introduction to Chemistry

This course is a preparatory course for students who have never had chemistry and covers the metric system, atoms and elements, bonding, solids, liquids, gases, stoichiometry, solutions, reactivity, and acids and bases. The lab includes experiments in organic chemistry. This course is appropriate for nursing students as well as students who will pursue higher level chemistry.



This could be very serious for some of the students because it is used for future courses (Chem I and II and Nursing).

[Igel]

13. Sounds like high school chemistry.

Required now, but not a few years ago.

Requiring it also doesn't mean students learn anything in it.

Face palm all around.

[JI7]

9. i Don't understand how this could happen

Do they not books ?