My MChem project students have submitted their theses to the online repository this year, and I’m writing a short blog about each one to help share the excellent work they did.

Zoe Nicolaou wrote a thesis titled Chemistry student enthusiasm: exploring student and teaching staff perspectives, which can be found in the ORA database. The project involved interviewing five teaching staff and five students (in the first half of their degree).

This topic is really important! The QAA Benchmark Statement for Chemistry changed during this year, but both versions establish enthusiasm for chemistry as an aim of a rigorous chemistry degree. The RSC accreditation criteria incorporate the QAA benchmark statement (unless a different standard is appropriate for a specific course), so any RSC-accredited degree must aim to make its students enthusiastic about the subject.

But what is enthusiasm? How can we understand it, and how can we promote it?

Chapter 1

Nicolaou establishes the QAA and RSC importance of enthusiasm, and points to the poor definition of the word ‘enthusiasm’ - often used either as a synonym or a catch-all for related concepts like motivation and interest.

Reviewing the closest literature and the broader field, Nicolaou makes the case for associating enthusiasm with Hidi and Renninger’s Four-phase model of interest development (FMID). She also acknowledges that Zimmerman’s analysis of subjective vitality is also worth bearing in mind, and that self-determination theory (SDT) underpins a coherent set of theoretical tools to pull apart the enthusiasm question. This marks out the theoretical dimensions of the interview-based study.

Chapter 2

Methodology. Nicolaou defines her research questions and makes the case for a qualitative approach to answering them.

1. Can FMID, subjective vitality and SDT be used to model enthusiasm?

2. How does students’ enthusiasm affect their workload?

3. How does students’ workload affect their enthusiasm?

The positionality statement is helpful, situating the study in a context where different parties often have reasonable-but-divergent views.

Chapter 3

Workload was such a strong thread in participants’ responses that Nicolaou narrowed her analysis onto this topic. Chapter 3 lays out the central theories of workload (importantly, this goes beyond hours-and-minutes quantitative workload, embracing the perception of how much work people are doing in a qualitative sense) and explores how enthusiasm has a positive effect on workload: being enthusiastic makes it easier to work. For example, enthusiasm reduces the perceived effort of study.

‘I think that [enthusiasm and grades] do interact because I think that if you’re enthusiastic it’s much easier to work hard if you are interested in the subject. It’s very difficult to stay motivated, so enthusiasm definitely does help.’ – Tutor 4

‘I think [enthusiasm is] finding studying not a chore’ – Student B

‘If you have […] just a bit of enthusiasm for chemistry and you’re going to do a chemistry degree, the workload will easily swamp that, and you’ll have a miserable time. But if you’ve got loads of enthusiasm for chemistry, you [can] push through that and you have a little bit of a fun time with it’ – Student D

Chapter 3 also served to confirm that FMID was a useful way to theorise most of the discussion around enthusiasm: enthusiasm isn’t quite the same thing as well-developed individual interest, but it is closely-enough related to make it a useful approximation.

Chapter 4

Workload also has negative aspects, and Chapter 4 explored how high workloads could reduce enthusiasm. Some of this was quite blunt: high workloads make people less enthusiastic.

‘The workload is massive. Getting used to that affected how much I liked chemistry in the first couple of terms because I thought is it worth how much time I’m having to put in?’ – Student B

‘Everyone’s a little bit overworked and just keeping their head above water and that is at odds with finding ways to become enthusiastic about academic material’ – Tutor 1

Some of the discussion was much more subtle, though. High workload could be framed as a response to low autonomy, for example: working a lot - often to the exclusion of social activities or deep learning - can be the only way to feel on top of the broad-and-deep study demands of chemistry.

‘[first year] was more manageable, the content wasn’t as heavy, so I had time to grasp the concept while doing the problem sheet, but in second year, I find myself digging through lecture notes for answers rather than understanding the content.[…] When you haven’t understood something you learned last week […] it unmotivates you when it comes to studying [the next topic…] so then all the enthusiasm you had about chemistry and like all the love you had for the subject just disappears because you’re just, tired of doing things that you don’t get enough time to understand.’- Student A

‘Sometimes [students] find problems with time managing – so being able to have a life and to dedicate some time to sport, to this and to the other at the same time that having the course because basically the course, it’s all of your time’ – Tutor 5

Yet the challenge of the volume of study can be satisfying if it’s overcome:

‘There are times in first year when things come together. Students have got the time management sorted, they’ve got it all going. Suddenly, they feel ‘I can do this’ and that gives a real boost and brings back to life any enthusiasm that was deadened.’ – Tutor 4

It was really interesting to see some discussion of assessment in the deep/surface learning discussion, too. While the dominant focus of the thesis was on workload, it is clear that the perception of workload relates closely to the way that assessment is realised:

‘It can be frustrating when the majority of a course is just content, because then it gets very scary very quickly if the lecturer mentioned like 50 examples and I don’t know how many of these are in the course or expected material and do I have to memorise all of these and then it gets very like disheartening, you don’t want to bother’ – Student C

‘The stress on memorising is too great and surprising because I looked forward to coming to uni to develop problem-solving skills. But I’ve pulled that right back and stopped myself trying to figure things out because as soon as I stopped trying to figure things out myself and just started memorising my grades instantly went up and that really pulled my enthusiasm back […] if there was more stress on problem-solving I would be developing more skills and even though chemistry has many many more hours than some other subjects, it would be worthwhile because I’d gain so much […], my enthusiasm for chemistry would skyrocket because it would make every hour that I worked rewarding’ – Student E

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 was an interesting reflection on the positions of different parties. Nicolaou argues that internal enthusiasm can be gauged directly by an individual about themselves, but can only be gauged indirectly by an observer. This means that enthusiasm can be mis-identified: students might feel unenthusiastic, but staff might nevertheless frame them as being enthusiastic. 

‘You select students here who are […] intrinsically interested, because you have to work very hard to get here’ – Tutor 1

‘Lots of my friends [aren’t] as enthusiastic as me about chemistry. They wanted to do the degree because it was a good degree in a good place, and they think about the prospects afterwards’ – Student D

Common staff discussions of enthusiasm draw on ideas of performance (good work, asking questions), but students described how they could produce good work in ways which related to extrinsic motivators rather than enthusiasm. The way workload is calibrated against staff-perceived student enthusiasm might lead to setting too much work, damaging student enthusiasm.

‘There is an assumption that people will go above and beyond […] a reasonable level of effort required, if you assume someone’s passionate about something […] If a student is motivated by other reasons, you [expect] more of them than they can give’ – Tutor 1

Chapter 6

Nicolaou makes three recommendations based on her interviews and analysis.

Calculate Experienced and Ideal Objective Workload

We need better data on student workload, and a clearer statement of how many hours are appropriate. There were reports in this study of tutorial work alone taking 40h/week, which is punishing when scheduled lectures and labs can total 20h/week.

Reduce Memorisation in Assessment

Rote memorisation increases the objective workload (you have to learn more) and also the perceived workload (learning is less enjoyable). Even simply specifying which content must be memorised would be a useful first step.

Reduce Core Content and Increase Choice

The breadth of the course spreads students thin, and the moments where students can learn deeply are associated with enthusiasm. Offering more scope to specialise would improve students’ scope to gain enthusiasm.