A Chemical Instrumentation Game for Teaching Critical Thinking and

In the Classroom

A Chemical Instrumentation Game for Teaching Critical Thinking and Information Literacy in Instrumental Analysis Courses David E. Henderson Department of Chemistry, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut 06106 [email protected]

Instrumental analysis courses seek to introduce students to the latest developments in chemical instrumentation and to help them learn to use the chemical literature to stay current in the field. Various approaches for involving students with the literature in fourth-year seminars and advanced courses have been tried (1), but often students simply summarize one or a few papers chosen with little thought. Project laboratories (2) in which students select the instruments or protocols for a specific analysis have long been an important component of analytical chemistry courses (3-6). The limitation of project laboratories for finding cutting-edge instrumentation is that standard methods often take a long time to mature and a focus on solving a specific problem will lead students to existing methods rather than new instruments. The Chemical Instrumentation Game (CIG) was developed to address the perceived deficiency of existing pedagogy for students to identify the most recent advancements in instrumentation that were not yet in textbooks or standard methods. The CIG is one component of an upper-level undergraduate instrumental analysis course for chemistry and biochemistry majors. It typically involves part or all of four class meetings during the semester depending on class size. The CIG adds a competitive element to the literature search process that encourages a higher level of critical thinking in evaluating the journal literature. The instrumental analysis course also includes collaborative activities including a semester-long group project that requires evaluation of various methods to solve specific analysis problems (2). The CIG has been successfully used for several years by three different faculty members and with class sizes from 4 to 16 students. Larger classes could easily be accommodated by grouping students. This approach can be adapted to other chemistry courses that wish to focus on current literature. Simulation games have been widely used as pedagogy to increase student engagement (7, 8). Over the past decade, the use of simulation games has found growing application in teaching general education courses through the highly successful Reacting to the Past (RTTP) pedagogy developed by Mark Carnes and now used at over 200 colleges and universities (9). RTTP courses have been shown to increase student engagement with material and enhance writing and oral presentation skills (10). A detailed assessment of the impact of this pedagogy in general education has been published (11). The CIG grew out of experience using the RTTP pedagogy. Although it lacks some of the elements of the former game, it has been found to provide a similar level of motivation and engagement. 412

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The CIG involves students in direct competition with each other, and this competition can be structured either between individual students or small groups. In the RTTP pedagogy, small groups are normally competing with each other, providing both collaborative and competitive elements. In small classes, the competition can be directly between individual students. The course in which CIG has been used involves many elements of student collaboration. Students work in pairs on lab experiments and groups of 2-4 students collaborate on a course-long research project that culminates in a 3-4 week independent lab project. In this environment, it was felt that direct competition between individual students was appropriate. However, in courses lacking strong collaborative experience, the CIG could be used as a competition between groups of students. Experience within the RTTP consortium at over 200 institutions has shown that competitive elements have a powerful ability to motivate students, even when the stakes in winning are low. Game Details The CIG is a simulation of the process of identifying new instruments for commercialization. Each student is assigned the role of senior vice president (VP) at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. Thermo began acquiring major instrument companies in the 1990s and has become the major player in the chemical instrumentation business. Because most of this growth has been through the acquisition of other companies, the simulation represents a realistic scenario. The instructor acts as CEO and provides feedback to the VPs throughout the game. The game sessions consist of a series of class meetings in which the VPs (the students) present information on cuttingedge technologies in particular fields. Typical examples are shown in Table 1. The schedule for these presentations is based on the order of presentation of topics in the course. Each major topic culminates in a game session at which the assigned students present their proposals for that technique, for example, mass spectrometry. Students are assigned to topics in a random drawing. Depending on class size, each student will do one or more presentations. The student's goal is to survey the current literature, including recent professional meetings such as the Pittsburgh Conference, and identify what he or she feels is the most important new instrument concept or product in the specific area. Students post their ideas on the course BlackBoard site as soon as they find it to stake their claim. Students submit an annotated bibliography of their literature search for evaluation with their proposal. Each student prepares a short presentation,

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Vol. 87 No. 4 April 2010 pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc. 10.1021/ed800110f Published on Web 03/09/2010

In the Classroom Table 1. Typical List of Presentation Topics Topic

Possible Techniques To Explore

Mass spectrometry (Thermo owns Finnegan in this market.)

• Should we buy a company in the MALDI-TOF markets? • Are there other emerging applications such as proteomics or genomics in which we should invest? • What about clinical applications? • Are there new technologies for sample introduction, separation, or detection that we should acquire? • What about portable instruments or devices for national security applications? • What about DART and DESI?

Voltammetery and electrochemical sensors (Thermo owns Orion in this market.)

• What are the cutting-edge applications? • Is there room for growth in the field? • Are there important clinical or environmental applications that may make this a profitable sector in which to invest? • This topic can include sensors such as the “chemical nose” and devices for explosive detection as well as more traditional electrochemical devices.

NMR spectroscopy (Thermo has no product in this market.)

• Solid-state NMR • Magnetic resonance imaging • Very high-field instruments Interfaced HPLC-NMR are some areas you should explore. There may be others. What about miniature or portable instruments? Thermo is not established in the market. Should we invest?

X-ray and Surface Analysis (Thermo has a line of X-ray analysis products.)

• What are modern applications? • What technique is most frequently used? • Are X-ray, Raman, or STM/AFM applications most promising?

typically 10 min, to explain the instrument they want to acquire for Thermo. They must then convince their peers to invest in their idea and convince the CEO (instructor) that they have done a thorough evaluation of the cutting-edge literature in the field. The oral presentation must cover all of the following: 1. What technology is being recommended, what scientific principles are involved, and what are its applications? How is it novel? 2. What is the market potential? Is this something that will be bought by only a few major research centers or will be widely used? 3. Who are the leading researchers in the emerging field and where do they work? (Students should not contact them, but should know how that would be done should the CEO wish to retain them as consultants.) 4. Explain in detail the significance of a selected journal article related to the proposal, including some details of what was done, why it is significant to the field, and why it might lead to growth potential within the instrument business. 5. Who are the major suppliers of instrumentation in the field, their size in terms of market price?

In addition to their oral presentation, students hand in an annotated bibliography of at least five important recent articles relevant to their proposal. The bibliography is graded and provides evidence of the extent of each student's literature search. The students also prepare a one page statement (double spaced) that will include the following:

• What company or technology do they want to invest in? • What company or researcher owns the patent or is the lead researcher for this idea? • If the technology is owned by a public company, what is the value of the company? • If the technology was developed in an academic lab, who is the lead researcher?

During each class session of the CIG, the assigned students, typically 3-5, make their oral presentations. These may be done

r 2010 American Chemical Society and Division of Chemical Education, Inc.

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using PowerPoint or may be less formal, depending on the technology available and the desire of the students. Each student makes a specific proposal for Thermo to invest in his or her chosen area. The rest of the class and the instructor question each presenter about his or her proposal after the presentation. Questions from the instructor should ensure that any fundamental flaws in the assertions of the presenters are exposed. The competitive nature of the activity leads students to ask critical questions of their competition and to seek clarification of points they did not understand. After all presentations, the students not making presentations vote on where Thermo should invest. This is done on signed ballots that are seen only by the instructor. Each VP controls $10 million in investment capital for each session to invest in other VPs projects. At the end of each game session, the instructor collects the investment documents and distributes the outcome in terms of total investment in each proposal to the class by email. An overall evaluation of the potential success of the projects proposed should also be discussed along with suggestions on presentation skills. Observations of Student Performance In evaluating the CIG student proposals, a spreadsheet was used to tabulate the investments by each student and for each proposed project. Whereas most top students in the course did well in the CIG, some average students did their best work in the course in this activity. They found exceptionally good literature and their grade for this part of the course was higher than that on exams, lab reports, or research papers. Other students who did excellent work on exams found it difficult to make critical evaluations. This is due to the different set of skills involved in the CIG from writing lab reports and taking exams. Thus, the CIG provides a useful measure of important critical thinking skills that are hard to measure in more traditional metrics. The spreadsheet also suggests which students made the most critical evaluations of the presentations, as noted by small

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investments in some projects and large investments in others. Extra credit points were given to the student with the highest investment in his or her project and to the student who showed the most critical judgment in evaluating other projects. Data from several classes indicate that students prefer to split their investments rather evenly if they are not making really critical decisions about the techniques and that as they become more critical in their thinking, the range of their investments in specific projects increases. One way to evaluate this is to compute the standard deviation of the investments of each student. Students who are dividing their investments equally among all presenters will have very small standard deviation for their investments. Students making the most critical decisions will tend to invest heavily in a few instruments and have little or no investment in the weaker proposals. This leads to a large range and standard deviation in their investments. It is important that the faculty member is involved in questioning each presenter to ensure that any fundamental flaws in their logic are revealed so that student investments are based on accurate understanding. The faculty member can also keep notes on the quality of questions asked by students during the discussion. At the end of the game, the CEO should announce which projects have been funded and possibly promote the student who has been most critical in evaluating their peers to President. This provides an opportunity to discuss the importance of critical evaluation. The simulation game motivated each student to gain as much investment in their projects through convincing presentations and by selecting important applications. However, grades for the activity were based on the instructor's evaluation of the student's presentation and the annotated bibliography and written statement. Only a small increment of the grade was based on the quantity of investment acquired by each student. Accessing Literature Resources for the Game Library resources for students will vary from institution to institution. Some important resources for students are instrument company Web sites, the Pittsburgh Conference Web site, and the Analytical Sciences Digital Library (12). These Web links can be provided to students on a course Web site. Students at this institution have access to both STNEasy and the ACS Journal Archive. To aid students in using these resources, a PowerPoint presentation on literature searching using STNEasy, the ACS Journal Archive, and the Business Resource Center was prepared and used in the class. This presentation was prepared with the expectation that it would also be made available for use by students in other courses as well. To this end, a narration was recorded to accompany most slides that students can access as they watch the presentation. Furthermore, notes were provided on most pages. This presentation is, therefore, a stand alone product. Periodic changes in the Web interface of the local college library, STNEasy, and the ACS Journal Archive require periodic updates to this presentation. This presentation is available online (13) as an example that can be modified with screen shots for local conditions. Conclusions This activity replaces a journal activity in which students typically just grabbed the first article they found or in some cases were given a list of “important” articles to prevent their bringing 414


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in trivial material for the discussion. In the former activity, students also paid little attention to other student's presentations. By setting this activity as a competitive game with a premium placed on finding current and promising techniques, students are encouraged to not only search the literature but to evaluate it and make judgments. Students tend to evaluate multiple possible techniques before they settle on one to pursue, providing the first aspect of critical thinking. These judgments include considering the impact of a new device based on potential market, the improvement it offers over existing methods, and the importance of the analysis it allows. For example, in 2003, students placed a high value on techniques that would improve screening for explosives and a low value on a revolutionary technique that would probably only sell a few instruments worldwide because of its narrow application. The second aspect of critical thinking occurs as the students develop their arguments to convince the rest of the class that their technique is the best. This requires reading the literature but also thinking about markets and general needs for analysis. The competitive nature of the activity gives each student an incentive to find an interesting topic and to convince his or her fellow students that he or she has found the best article and technique. The third aspect of critical thinking occurs in the student audience. The students must consider the various advantages of each proposal. Students often aggressively question each other and challenge their judgment during the discussion. The presence of the faculty voice in this discussion is important to ensure that misunderstandings are corrected. The students make their final evaluations of each proposal when they “vote” at the end of class by investing some of their resources in the techniques they feel are most promising. The student handout used for the game is provided in the supporting material along with the PowerPoint presentation used to introduce literature searching. The CIG has led to a much higher level of student interest and produced satisfying interactions. This approach could be adapted for use with other advanced courses by adjusting the scenario to focus on other aspects of the chemical literature including new synthetic reagents or techniques in any field. Acknowledgment The CIG was developed with the support of the Mellon Foundation and the help of Ann Marie Krupski, Jennifer van Sickle, and Mike Williams. The suggestions of Janet Morrison and William Church who have used the game are also acknowledged. Literature Cited 1. Bowyer, W. J.; Kaydos, J. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 184– 185. 2. Henderson, D. E. Problem Solving in Analytical Chemistry. In Innovations in College Science Teaching; Penick, J. E., Dunkhase, J. A., Eds.; Society for College Science Teachers: Washington, DC, 1988; pp 53-58. 3. Settle, F. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1979, 56, 411–412. 4. Settle, F. A.; Pleva, M. A. Chem. Tech. 1982, 12, 444–448. 5. Wenzel, T. J. Collaborative and Project-based Learning in Analytical Chemistry. In Active Learning: Models from the Analytical Sciences; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2007; pp 54-68.


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6. Wenzel, T. J. Cooperative Learning and Project-based Laboratories as a Way to Broaden Learning Outcomes. In Developing and Sustaining a Research-Supportive Curriculum: A Compendium of Successful Practices; Council on Undergraduate Research: Washington, DC, 2007; pp 21-39. 7. Greenblat, C. S. Designing Games and Simulations; Sage: Newbury Park, CA, 1988. 8. King, B. T.; Janis, I. L. Human Relations 1956, 9, 177–186. 9. Reacting to the Past Home Page. http://www.barnard.edu/ reacting/index.html (accessed Jan 2010). 10. Carnes, M. C. Change 2005, 37, 6–11.


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11. Stroessner, S. J.; Susser-Beckerman, L.; Whittaker, A. J. Educ. Psych. 2009, 101, 605–620. 12. Analytical Sciences Digital Library Home Page. http://asdlib.org/ (accessed Jan 2010). 13. A PowerPoint presentation for literature searching. http://www. trincoll.edu/∼henderso/textfi∼1/analch∼1.htm (accessed Jan 2010).

Supporting Information Available Student handout; student ballot for voting. This material is available via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.


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A Chemical Instrumentation Game for Teaching Critical Thinking and

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