Rewriting Chemistry: How This Prof Saw a 71% DFW Reduction After Authoring a Top Hat Text
175+
Introductory Chemistry students taught per year
71%
Reduction in DFW rates from spring 2018 to spring 2024
43%
Increase in ‘A’ and ‘B’ grades from spring 2018 to spring 2024
The Challenge
Making Introductory Chemistry appeal to non-major students
David Frohnapfel has spent the last two-and-a-half decades teaching Introductory Chemistry, currently serving as a professor in the chemistry department at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. Whether focusing on bonds or atomic reactions, the subject matter has largely remained the same over the years. What’s changed, however, is student readiness and participation. Frohnapfel teaches more than 80 percent non-major students who are seeking a compulsory course credit. Around 100 students enroll every fall and another 50–70 take part in the spring semester. “Nearly every student coming in seems to be chemistry or science phobic. My cohort isn’t convinced they can do well based on past experience,” Frohnapfel shares.
A secondary challenge for Frohnapfel was teaching with the material included in static, print textbooks. “The one size fits all approach for most GOB or Liberal Arts textbooks contains too much extraneous information. Students in Introductory Chemistry typically have weak science backgrounds. Texts that jump into chemistry too early are difficult for students if they don’t have a firm grasp of physical matter, for instance,” he says. Frohnapfel realized that less than half his students purchased his assigned print textbook. He knew he wanted to seek out a more customizable, interactive solution that would let him tailor every chapter to his unique group of students.
School background
Slippery Rock University (SRU) is a four-year public university that serves more than 8,000 students annually. The school was founded in 1889 and offers over 150 undergraduate programs and 40 graduate degrees and certificates—ranging from physical sciences to mathematics and engineering. SRU was ranked by U.S. News & World Report on its list of “Best Regional Universities — North” and “Top Public Schools — Regional Universities (North).” The school is part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE).
About the professor
David Frohnapfel is an Instructor in the Department of Chemistry and Environmental Geoscience at Slippery Rock University (SRU) in Pennsylvania. He holds a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also serves as First-Year Laboratories Manager—a role he has held at SRU since 2008.
David Frohnapfel Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Slippery Rock University
The Solution
Collaborating with Top Hat’s Custom Solutions Team to produce a media-rich text as the foundation for his flipped classroom
Frohnapfel began to explore Top Hat’s Custom Solutions in spring 2020, embarking on a journey of authoring his own fully customizable chemistry text. Frohnapfel first audited his existing homework sheets and used this material to form the foundation of his text, updating the content in the process. “Top Hat fits my needs because I can determine my own topics or provide a cohesive set of materials that are scaffolded properly. I can also drop in questions where appropriate to weave in interactivity and encourage reflection,” he says. The text was completed in fall 2020 and used by students for the first time that semester. “Top Hat literally gave me the freedom to create the book that was in my head for the last 20 years.”
Paired with his new text, Frohnapfel has taken advantage of Top Hat’s in-class engagement features to successfully flip his classroom. Prior to class, students read and complete questions in half an assigned chapter in their text. They also complete follow-up comprehension questions from the last lecture that reinforce the key ideas from the reading. During class, Frohnapfel presents mini-lectures that include live polling questions. These polling questions include a mix of multiple choice, click on target, word cloud and matching that indicate if students have grasped a concept or not. Frohnapfel calls this an “at-need lecturing model,” where he can tailor questions based on his cohort’s progress. “I like that I can seamlessly present slide decks as a mini-lecture with poll questions in worksheet activities. Students who are unable to attend can still participate in activities by logging into Top Hat.”
Frohnapfel facilitates weekly chapter quizzes hosted on his Learning Management System that account for 15 percent of students’ final grades. He’s even observed an increase in the number of A and B grades and a steep reduction in DFW rates (that is, the proportion of students who received a D, failed or withdrew from the course). Frohnapfel has the data to prove it as evidenced below.
“Top Hat literally gave me the freedom to create the book that was in my head for the last 20 years.”
The Results
Charting an increase in ‘A’ and ‘B’ grades and lower DFW rates over a six-year period
Frohnapfel ran a longitudinal study of the impact of his course pre- and post-Top Hat. He reviewed data collected from his Introductory Chemistry course from spring 2018 to spring 2024. The findings underscore the tangible impact flipping his course, mixed with Top Hat’s custom content and classroom polling tools, have had on student success. In spring 2018, Frohnapfel recorded a 42 percent average DFW rate across his cohort. Final ‘A’ and ‘B’ grades hovered at 25 percent combined.
Fast forward to spring 2024 and these figures have dramatically changed. DFW rates dropped to 20 percent (a 71 percent reduction) whereas ‘A’ and ‘B’ grades rose to 39 percent (a 43 percent increase). “On exam four, they outperformed the typical exam score by almost a letter grade—they had a high 80s average even for the hardest exam,” Frohnapfel shares.
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