Welcome to the Chem 1A Preparation Course
This is a FREE, VOLUNTARY, not for a grade, not for college credit, self-paced course to prepare you for Chem 1A and to help you review for Chem 1B. The content in this course gets you ready for most of the first lecture exam in Chem 1A and the first five experiments in the lab because the material, in theory, should be review of high school chemistry. Module 14 is specifically for Chem 1B students.
Typically we offered this course as an in person workshop for nine 5-hour days in late July, early August. That might sound horrible but it was actually appreciated by many that they got a chance to focus on chemistry and got to know people in the course. It built community. This Canvas course is for you to do on your own. My suggestion to you is to create a calendar to pace yourself doing one or two modules per week, if you are starting early enough. Even if you only get through half the modules, that is still some preparation for the start of the class. OR you can set aside a week and just go hardcore through all the modules...
The Chem 1A Prep at SJSU has been going on since 2003. For the first ten years we kept track of how students who completed those nine days would do in the first lecture exam and in the course overall. The results were impressive. It was typically 10 point higher average on the first exam and 90% passing rate for the course with a C or better, when the passing rate for those not doing the Chem 1A Prep was more like 65%.
We were unable to offer it in the Summer of 2020 because of COVID and will have to offer it online as this course for the Summer of 2021. I created this course to help students meet deficiencies from high school. I did very well in college and it was because I would spend some amount of time each week during my summer break reading the first three book chapters and doing the problems in those chapters for any chemistry or math class I was taking in Fall. These were the two areas that I wanted to excel in. It made me feel more confident and I must say it impressed the heck out of the faculty when I could answer questions in lecture. It also taught me how to plan ahead and how to study on my own.
For those of you who had a good high school chemistry and feel very confident, you might try the self-test first and see if you remember your stuff. Then go back to the handouts and videos to check what you messed up. You can take the self-test multiple times.
Just in case, I have listed below some of the things I did that helped me do well in college science and math courses.
1) As you do assigned problems for a topic, create a cheat sheet. That sheet would have information needed to do the problems including equations, concepts, common mistakes I would make, reminders. I was then able to use this sheet to review before taking a test. Rather than reading the book and all my notes again, I would have maybe three pieces of paper with everything on it. They were also very helpful for the final exam as well a when I took the chemistry subject test for the GRE. (Note some of you want to go to medical school, etc. Those papers might be very helpful to you then also when you take the MCAT, etc.)
2) Do your problems for practice in a notebook and label them well. That way you can find them again. Many students work out problems in loose pieces of paper that turn into a mess when looking for a problem to ask a question about or when trying to study before a test. Post-its are great to find the problem you want to ask about as well as for writing the question you might have so that you don't forget it.
3) For very tough classes my notes during lecture were messy but then I would go home and rewrite them nice and pretty. When I did not understand something I was rewriting I would see if I could figure it out by looking at the book, or if not, I would go to office hours. The faculty were totally impressed with my elegant notes to the point that one even asked to borrow them at the end of the course.
4) If you know that the coming week the course is going to cover Chapter 3 in the book. I would look it over, give it a quick read but not highlighting everything. I wanted to see what the book had in it so that when the instructor talked about it I could maybe worry less because I remember that the book had that equation or graph or diagram. Sometimes it also allowed me to see that the book explained it in a way that I understood better than what the instructor as doing in class.
5) I slept, particularly the night before a tough exam. All-nighters accomplish nothing in chemistry and math classes because these are not classes about memorizing everything. They require being able to think as well as come up with a procedure for doing a problem quickly. When you are dead tired that is not possible.
To start this self-paced course just select modules and start with Module 1. The first item in every module provides you with a list of what has to be done plus it has the videos embedded in it for you to view. Remember, you can stop the video before I work out a problem so that you can try the problem first or to take down notes; you can rewind to hear an explanation again; and you can make the video full screen if you are having a hard time viewing it. Also I took photos of the board after I completed the video and posted them in the module, so technically you can print those pages and have notes....
Best,
Karen Singmaster