I’m presenting a poster at the 2024 Sommer Symposium on an assignment I created for students in General Chemistry classes.

Back in college, a writing professor gave us the opportunity to reflect on the readings by using whatever form we deemed appropriate to express our learning. She mentioned phrases like write a poem or create a story and develop a dance. As someone who took dance lessons for 8 years, I jumped at the chance to use dance in a college project. I developed an interpretive dance to “I want a wife’.  Using my limited dance knowledge, I created a 2 Minute one women show acting out all of the tasks that a ‘traditional wife’ would do in a day: from making breakfast, to washing laundry, to cleaning the house. I ‘studied’ for that project more than any other exam I took in that class, and that project  moment that resonated with me more than any other final I took.

Once I became a teacher, I wanted to provide the same outlet for students. I taught a course with students in who volunteered at local community organizations. In order to earn credit, they had to reflect on their experience in weekly journals and in a summary reflection. At the end of the term, I offered students the opportunity to use creative means to reflect on their learning, even through interpretive dance. One student group reflected on their volunteer work at a local farm by dancing through the growth of a seed to a plant. Over 8 years later, the image of students acting out their volunteer work sticks more than any other activity.   Colleagues in the arts and sciences, told me that these types of experiences are ’embodied pedagogy’ – learning that joins body and mind in a physical and mental act of knowledge construction. (Nyugen and Larson 2015)

Embodied pedagogy can provide opportunities for students to express their learning in ways that may differ from the models we require in class. Create Something Creative came from a desire to provide ways to express their understanding in ways that could reflect their own culture and self. Students from marginalized backgrounds may have opportunities to express understandings that may not be reflected in the curriculum, to share their learning in ways that are meaningful to them, which may provide deeper insight into themselves and help them experience a deeper sense of belonging.

Creative assignments can also enhance student communication skills, like the way the Dance your PhD contest encourages doctoral candidates to explain their research to diverse audiences.

Grading the Assignment

The biggest barrier in designing this assignment was, ‘How do I assess student learning in artistic forms?”  To avoid having to grade students on their performance or artwork, the grade on this assignment is mostly based on the student reflection. Students earn 20% of the score for simply submitting an artifact of something creative, like a picture, painting, recording,  They are not judged on the quality of the artifact (as long as the work is legible and somewhat related to the course topics). The remaining 80% of the score is based on a written reflection which I call an artist’s statement.

Artist statements are written explanations from the artist about the work they design. They often describe why the artist chose to express themselves using a particular form (paint, food, dance, song, etc) and struggles they encountered as they created the piece. In this class, the prompt for the artist’s statement asks students to refer to specific learning goals from the course and explain any struggles they may have encountered why learning the topic and creating the project. They also need to describe what they expect the audience to take away from the project. Each prompt is reflected in the rubric, which is summarized below.

What did students submit?

Only about 40% of students in the class chose this assignment, the remaining students submitted a chemistry problem they wrote, solved, and reflected on themselves, or did not submit anything. But of the 40% of students, most submitted a drawing or artwork. Some students recorded songs, including a fantastic rap about using dimensional analysis in stoichiometry.  About 10% of students chose to bake something, including a student who hand prepared donuts in the same of a Lewis structure, using donut holes to represent electron pairs. Some students created video entries, using stop motion recording or hand puppets to explain chemical principles.

What is the impact on students?

This assignment has only been used in two terms of general chemistry so it is unclear what the long term impact will be. However, anecdotally, students seemed to enjoy the opportunity to express themselves in different forms.  They were also able to bridge connections between their personal life and chemistry class beyond content. For example, the student who designed Lewis structure donuts used the form because their family owned a donut shop, and the donut shop had been their family’s sole source of income for several years. In their reflection, the student described how meaningful it was to connect their family business to the chemistry class.

In anonymous Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) and course evaluations, a few students describe the flexible creative assignments as being fun. In the SALG, around 60% of students described the Create Something Creative as somewhat effective, much effective, or very effective for their learning. This is including students who did not complete the creative assignment.

In addition to the students, the activity has a large impact  on the teacher. The grading of these Creative Assignments is much more enjoyable than grading exams, as the students never cease to produce creative assignments. Its worth trying an assignment like this is in your own class!