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William R. Robinson
Professor—Inorganic Chemistry and Chemical Education
Email: wrrobin@purdue.edu
Phone: 765-494-5453
Office: WTHR 230B
For Professor Robinson's individual Home Page click here.
Chemical education is coming out of a paradigm shift. For years we believed that the way to teach chemistry is the way chemists are taught, that students are empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge, and that good teaching consists of telling. In recent years the chemical education paradigm has changed from faculty centered to student centered. The new paradigm includes the recognition that students construct their own (often ill-informed) understandings of chemistry, that not all students learn in the same ways, that active learning promotes better understanding than does rote learning, and that our students are not like us.
Just as scientific paradigms guide the research of scientific communities, the chemical education paradigm guide the content, structure, and pedagogy of our courses as well as the research that informs our practice. My research follows the new paradigm. Of particular interests are the concepts developed by chemistry students, how inappropriately developed concepts inhibit learning, sources of inappropriate concepts, and corrective measures, both traditional and technology based. My students and I have worked at documenting chemistry misconceptions at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. We have developed an inventory that can help evaluate the extent of misconceptions among students in introductory courses and the effectiveness of the courses in remediating misconceptions. We have also examined the responses of students and graduate assistants to cooperative learning in chemistry at the college level.
Education
B.S., 1961, M.S., 1962, Texas Technological College; Ph.D., 1966, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; NSF Postdoctoral Fellow, 1966-67, University of Sheffield, England.Selected Publications
- Mulford D. R.; Robinson, W. R., An inventory for alternate conceptions among first-semester general chemistry students . J. Chem. Educ. 2002 , 79 , 739-744.
- Robinson , W. R., Cognitive theory and the design of multimedia instruction . J. Chem. Educ. 2004 , 81 , 10-13.
- Robinson, W. R., The Inquiry Wheel, an Alternative to the Scientific Method. J. Chem. Educ. 2004 , 81, 791-792..
- Lyle, K. S.; Robinson, W. R., A Statistical Evaluation: Peer-led Team Learning in an Organic Chemistry Course. J. Chem. Educ 2003 , 79, 132-133.