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Dr. Matt Miller, Assistant Professor
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Phone: (605) 688-6274
Fax: (605) 688-6364
E mail Dr. Matt Miller
Education
• B.S., 1985, University of South Dakota
• M.S., 1998, Purdue University
• Ph.D., 2001 Purdue University
Chemistry has been described as the “central science” due to its many connections with other scientific fields. Yet, students often fail to recognize these connections and become frustrated while they study chemistry. They appear to perceive chemistry as overwhelming and unrelated to their world. A need exists to understand why these frustrations occur and how instructors can help students develop a better understanding of chemistry.
A learning theory exists which offers an explanation for how individuals construct these understandings. The constructivist theory postulates that individuals through their backgrounds, attitudes, abilities, and experiences generate knowledge. This construction of knowledge by individuals has been described as the integration of private understandings with personal experiences. As educators, we must be aware of these private understandings while providing opportunities for students to more easily construct connections within their knowledge.
One tool which may provide such opportunities is the concept map. This study tool asks students to visually display their knowledge of specific concepts. The result of this mapping activity provides the student, instructor, and researcher with several knowledge constructing opportunities. For students, the map helps to organize information regarding a topic while at the same time provides the opportunity for the students to evaluate their private understandings. For instructors, the maps provide a visual display of what students believe they know, allowing instructors to evaluate and plan future lessons to enhance that knowledge. For researchers, the maps provide the opportunity to evaluate important connections between chemistry concepts. These important connections, termed critical links, are connections stu-dents must make to develop an understanding of a specific concept in chemistry.
Three objectives focus my research involving the use of concept maps within the chemistry classroom. First, I am interested in how the use of concept maps influences student understanding of chemistry, specifically, the influence of concept mapping on algorithmic problem solving. Using interviews and surveys, students provide information as to how concept maps influence knowledge construction. Second, the use of concept maps has identified critical links between chemistry concepts that students must know to understand a topic. I am interested in evaluating student concept maps in various chemistry topic areas to identify additional critical links. Finally, the identification of critical links provides important information for instructors. By understanding what is important for students to know, instructors can develop new methods to focus students on critical links within a topic. The development of new methods of instruction based upon the critical links students must know involves the construction of a form of teacher knowledge known as pedagogical content knowledge. Therefore, the goal of my work is to enhance student understanding while improving the instructional methods in chemistry.
Publications:
Francisco, J.S.; Nakhleh, M.B.; Nurrenbern, S.C.; Miller, M.L. In press, Assessing student understanding of general chemistry with concept mapping, Journal of Chemical Education.
Miller, M.L.; Borisch, J.; Raftery, D.; Francisco, J.S. 1998, Changing the product state distribution and kinetics in photocatalytic surface reactions using pulsed laser irradiation, Journal of the American Chem-ical Society, 120: 8265-8266 |
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