20 / 20
Chemistry Education 2018
Journal of Organic & Inorganic Chemistry
ISSN: 2472-1123
Page 41
August 27-28, 2018
Zurich, Switzerland
8
th
Edition of International Conference on
Chemistry Education
and Research
S
ince 2001, The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), originally
through grants from the National Science Foundation
(I-STAR:Integrative Science Success, Teaching, and Retention
Program), has developed and enhanced the talent pool of
undergraduate students in science and engineering from the Paso
del Norte region of the United States by implementing and honing
the concept of peer led team learning (PLTL). Students register
for workshops that are co-requisite with lectures in certain
introductory science andmathematics courses. Theseworkshops
are led by peer leaders, students who have successfully passed
the course and are selected for this role. Research has shown
that the peer leaders are best able to facilitate the understanding
and further refinement of concepts for undergraduates in these
gatekeeper courses as opposed to learning only in a lecture
setting. These peer leaders are equipped with an eclectic
repository of educational techniques which are constantly
refined and expanded through participation in weekly meetings,
summer training sessions, travel to educational conferences,
and generation and transmission of educational materials. Over
the course of UTEP’s PLTL implementation, significant data have
been gathered in terms of the impact that this program has had
in improving several aspects of Science, Technology, Engineering
and Mathematics (STEM) curricula and its absorption. UTEP
was a founding campus in the formation of the Peer-Led Team-
Learning International Society as well as the development of a
funding mechanism via a living workbook which aid in sustaining
the program. The concept and content of the workbooks will be
also discussed in this presentation.
Biography
Mahesh Narayan has completed his PhD in Biophysics at The Ohio State
University and pursued Postdoctoral studies at Cornell University. Current-
ly, he is a Professor of Chemistry at The UTEP and serves on the Editorial
Board of
PLOS One
and
Cell Biochemistry and Biophysics.
He has published
extensively in the areas of protein folding, Parkinson’s disease and pedagog-
ical inroads in Chemistry.
mnarayan@utep.eduPeer led team learning and the living workbook
Mahesh Narayan
1
, A E Dreyfuss
2
, A Fraiman
3
, G B Saupe
1
and
James E Becvar
1
1
The University of Texas at El Paso, USA
2
CUNY - New York City College of Technology, USA
3
Northeastern Illinois University, USA
Mahesh Narayan et al., J Org Inorg Chem 2018, Volume 4
DOI: 10.21767/2472-1123-C5-014