Jack Eichler, Ph.D.

UC Riverside
jeichler@ucr.edu

As a teaching track faculty member, Jack Eichler's primary focus of scholarly activity lies in developing, implementing, and assessing more engaging learning environments for large enrollment general chemistry courses. He was the principal investigator on a United States Department of Agriculture Higher Education Challenge Grant Program project that helped recruit incoming freshmen to participate in an Environmental-Agricultural Science learning community. In this learning community, their students were engaged in environmental-based case studies in a general chemistry sequence, introduced to environmental/agricultural based research in a freshman seminar course, and then recruited to work on independent research projects under the guidance of a faculty mentor. He was also the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation Transforming Undergraduate Education in STEM (TUES) project that developed, implemented, and disseminated a series of problem-based case studies in a two year general chemistry/organic chemistry sequence. He is currently the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) project in which they are adapting problem-based studies to be used as in-class activities for flipped classroom modules. Preliminary studies demonstrate that implementing 4-6 flipped classroom modules in one quarter of general chemistry significantly increases the amount of active learning that takes place in lecture, and students participating in the flipped classroom modules perform better in the course than students in traditional lectures. Future work will focus on continuing to develop and implement flipped classroom modules, and work with faculty from other institutions to begin a broader dissemination project to promote the use of these active learning pedagogies in large introductory chemistry courses.