The Coach Approach . . . . A Winning Game Plan

Welcome to my pedagogical journey - one that ultimately led to a game-changing teaching strategy you may have never considered. But here's how it began.

I'm Eddie Brown, Ph.D. (Organic Chemistry), founder of Chem21Labs (2005) and former Chemistry Professor at Lee University (1990-2021) in Cleveland, Tennessee. After graduating from Lee University and earning my Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, I returned to Lee in 1990 to teach General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, and their labs.

My first 2-3 years were spent learning how to teach. The next 12 years focused on a bigger challenge: finding ways to engage more students and help them achieve at higher academic levels.

Workshops and professional meetings offered plenty of well-known advice:

• Be the "sage on the stage" who motivates by dazzling lectures.
• Be the "guide by the side" who invites students to join the journey.
• Remember: "Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."
• Great teachers inspire.
• Attend student events so they'll invest more in your class.

These ideas sounded great - but they had had minimal impact.

To the best of my ability, I tried all the recommended strategies - but I'm not an influencer, I'm a chemistry teacher.

Some colleagues reassured me: 25% of students will "get it" no matter what, and 25% won't - so teach to the middle 50%. Others framed the choice of a teacher as "teaching a mile wide and an inch deep" or "teaching an inch wide and a mile deep."

My acceptance of the prevailing philosophy was brief. My oldest daughter dreamed of becoming a physician, and I needed instructor-driven learning strategies that work for students willing to work. I wanted her chemistry education to be a mile wide and a mile deep so her dream would become reality.

Reflecting on the common advice, I noticed something important: the focus was always on the teacher. Yet most teachers already know their content (sage), help students (guide), and care deeply about student success.

  Referee   - throws flags and assesses penalties

  Coach   - helpful, caring, and wants players to succeed

Learners naturally form positive emotional connections with the coaches in their lives. They may connect with referees as well - but that connection depends on whether they agree with the call. When a referee is perceived as being against them, the relationship quickly becomes adversarial, at least in the player's mind.

Many students experience a similar psychological conflict when their teacher must serve as both coach and referee.

In today's classrooms, negative self-talk often prevents students from reaching their academic potential. After a poor performance, students typically blame their innate ability, their exam preparation, and even the referee. Every teacher has heard the these statements:

• I'm just not good at Chemistry.
• I studied the wrong things.
• More studying would not have helped.
• The questions came out of left field.
• The exam was too hard.
• The grading was too picky.

John Wooden said it best for athletics . . .

"The coach is first of all a teacher."

My journey has proven to me that the teacher is first of all a coach."

Coach or referee - which role do you enjoy more? If you said coach, keep reading. You can become 99% coach, creating a far more enjoyable experience for you and your students while helping them develop the best academic version of themselves - a true win-win.

First, consider a simple question: What is education?

I define education as the movement of a novice (N) toward expertise (E). Written in chemical language . . . .

Novice     Reagents  

  Expert

So what can an expert do?

1. Recall facts quickly and accurately - often within 3-8 seconds - across thousands of discipline-specific questions.
2. Explain complex processes used to solve advanced problems.
3. Maintain knowledge and thinking pathways through repeated retrieval into long-term memory.
4. Practice critical thinking by connecting new information to existing knowledge, researching when connections are unclear, and investigating further to expand their understanding.

A research chemist might ask: What reagents and reaction conditions convert a novice into an expert?

• The reagents are clear - build strong knowledge databases and require activities that create connections and pathways between facts.
• The real challenge lies in creating the reaction conditions that produce a successful transition. The optimal conditions will encourage engagement and positive self-talk - both conditions are present when the success catalyst is added.The real challenge is creating reaction conditions that enable a successful transition. Optimal conditions promote engagement and positive self-talk - both of which emerge when the Success catalyst is introduced.

Optimal reaction conditions are created by a coach - through the Coach Approach. This approach establishes a clear game plan where students learn more and enjoy learning more. Without a referee in the process, students know the coach is with them every step of the way.

The Chem21 approach uses five key learning reagents, activated by its own Success Catalyst:

1. Timed-Repetitive Quizzes (TRQs) are low-stakes, high-reward drills that develop the first expert competency: rapid fact retrieval.

   TRQs build the database.

   You (the expert) decide how much core chemical knowledge your students should retain after a year of chemistry. Chem21 supports this process with TRQ assignments built from questions an expert can answer in 3-8 seconds. The Chem21 database includes 4,000+ General Chemistry TRQ questions and 5,000+ Organic Chemistry questions. With repeated testing, most novices reach expert-level retrieval speed within 4-5 days.

   Each TRQ assignment contains a pool of related questions placed on a repeat schedule to keep key facts in the learned state through retrieval practice.

   "You must inspect what you expect"
   Paul J. Meyer – Founder of the Personal Development Industry

   Example: A 60-question TRQ assignment may include 60 molecules (as images) and ask students to identify properties such as valence electrons, geometry, hybridization, bond angles, or polarity.

   Students will achieve full credit on the Molecule TRQ attaining one of the following progression paths:

   • Novice - accumulate 75 correct answers across 10-20 quizzes.
   • Near Expert - Score ≥8/10 in ≤60 seconds on three quizzes.
   • Expert - score 10/10 in ≤60 seconds on a single quiz.

   To ensure commitment, TRQs typically count for ~20% of the course grade. Students average 2-3 hours per week, and by spring they are still retesting material introduced in the fall - keeping knowledge in long-term memory.

   By year's end, students can quickly retrieve thousands of chemical facts, transforming novices into learners with an expert-level knowledge database.

   Click Open TRQ Webpage for the theory and specific reaction conditions for the TRQ reagent.

2. Tutorials and Learning Pathways are interactive assignments that guide students step-by-step through complex processes.

   Tutorials and learning pathways build primary connections.

   After TRQ "conditioning," students are ready to learn a play. Repeated use of tutorials and learning pathways helps keep these plays in long-term memory.

   Students earn full credit by completing tutorial steps correctly, so persistent effort until mastery matters most. They typically spend about one hour per week learning new plays and rehearsing old ones.

   Click Tutorials and Learning Pathways for more details and examples.

3. Homework

   Homework builds secondary connections.

   TRQs and Tutorials prepare students for the next stage of learning, but progress can be undermined by their tendency to take the path of least resistance. In practice, students rarely see outside help on homework as cheating, so homework grades are almost always higher than exam grades. While some teachers act as referee, investigating and penalizing, this is largely a losing battle - homework under the present reaction conditions will always exceed exam performance.

   To ensure homework meaningfully impacts course performance, Chem21 adds a Success Catalyst that links homework directly to exams - explained in the next section.

   Click Chem21 Homework to view the available problem types.

4. Quizzes and Exams

   Exams certify the database and test all connections.

   Typically, this is the stage where the coach must step into the referee role. As exam day approaches, stress and negative self-talk rise, often becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Human nature has a negativity bias - we dwell on negative events more than positive ones - so simply telling students to "think positive" won't change our nature.

   Anxiety and negativity are transformed into achievement when the Homework Success Catalyst is added. In this reaction condition:

   • The coach assigns identical homework problems for all students and encourages collaboration with peers, tutors, or the coach.
   • Students are told that the exam will contain a subset of these exact problems and are encouraged to work until mastery.
   • Homework now becomes central to learning, teamwork is emphasized, and the referee role is minimized. The game becomes a skills test, allowing the coach to present every scenario students need to master and then evaluate their execution on exam day.

   For General Chemistry, 50 homework questions per chapter is typical; for Organic Chemistry, 70 questions. An Organic exam covering 4 chapters draws from a 280-question homework pool and includes 15-20 exam questions.

   When first implemented in 2005, exams were 80% homework questions and 20% new questions. While results improved, they weren't fully satisfying. Raising the homework part to 90% produced the same result: some students still thought, "Even if I study, the remaining 10-20% of exam questions are impossible, so my best grade is a C or B." Their mistrust of the referee led them to talk themselves into failure.

   An exponential shift occurred when 100% of exam questions came from homework. The dominant student voice became: "The coach wants me to work hard on work I can do." The key question became: "Am I willing to work?" Students who answered yes consistently progressed toward mastery, and success followed naturally.

   "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard."
   Tim Notke - High School Basketball Coach

   This approach has two major benefits for your team:

   • When students seek help, they they are seeking to gain the skills that allow them to help another teammate.
   • Encouraging collaboration "AI-proofs" the class - students helping students becomes the true Dream Team.

   "A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle."
   Father James Keller
   
   "The strength of the team is each individual member, the strength of each member is the team."
   NBA Coach Phil Jackson

5. Lab Report

   Labs build sensory connections.

   At Chem21Labs, labs are "our thing." We love how labs add sight, smell, and sound connections to a novice's growing chemistry schema. To eliminate the mindset "I just need the answer and a good grade . . . I'll learn it later" - the Coach Approach introduces the Lab Success Catalyst, creating conditions that encourage students collaborate while learning how to perform lab calculations using their own data.

   In this learning environment, each lab begins with a skills test on the previous week's calculations. The Chem21Labs program delivers and auto-grades the test using randomized data, so every student works with a unique dataset. Like the other catalysts above, this one simply creates conditions that help the greatest number of team members achieve the course learning objectives.

   One additional adjustment is to make the skills test 30% of the lab report grade. This reinforces the importance of learning and signals that while collaboration is allowed, mastering the calculations is the true priority.

Research supports the coach approach! Click the link below to view a 27-year longitudinal study of an Organic Chemistry course.