In the Classroom
A First-Day Exercise on Relevance of Chemistry to Nonscience Majors Kindles Sustained Positive Student Response Bal Ram Singh Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Dartmouth, MA 02747;
[email protected] Keeping students, especially nonscience majors, interested in a chemistry class is a continuing problem for most instructors. In recent years, the subject has been discussed by many individuals in various forums (1–7 ). A variety of innovative efforts are being pursued to address the declining interest of students in science in general and in chemistry in particular (8). During my years of teaching chemistry, students frequently commented toward the end of the semester that they found the subject matter relevant and interesting. However, this eventual realization did very little to enhance their participation in the chemistry classroom, because it came too late. Determined to change the situation in my classroom, I devised a classroom activity to trigger student interest early in the chemistry class. My chemistry class for nonscience majors typically consisted of about 100 students, of whom 90% were Nursing majors and the rest came from Textile Science, Psychology, and Art History. Class attendance remained about 60–70% and the attrition rate was significant toward the end of the semester. Experience based on classroom debates (6 ) and student comments led me to devote the first day of class to discussing the relevance of chemistry to my students’ majors. To get students interested early in the class, I designed a take-home exercise which I assigned on the very first day of the class. Students were given two weeks to complete the assignment, which was worth 20 points in a total of 620. The assignment had two parts. In the first, students were asked to list five topics in their majors that they thought required the knowledge of chemistry. To ensure a sincere effort, students were required to list the course name and number under which the topics were covered. I encouraged them to consult senior students as well as their advisors and instructors in developing their answers. The purpose was to get them to convince themselves that a basic knowledge of chemistry was relevant to a better understanding of course topics in their majors. In the second part, students were asked to provide justification for their choice of one of the topics in part one. The goal was to let the students argue and justify, using specific examples, how an understanding of chemical principles would help them to understand certain topics in their majors. The hope was that once they had argued in favor of chemistry’s relevance, they would continue to hold that opinion, and negative thoughts about chemistry would not surface as the subject matter picked up during the semester. Students seemed to take their assignment seriously, as reflected in representative responses listed below. Question 1. List five different topics in your major field of study where knowledge of chemical concepts (use CHM 101 or CHM 102 as a basis) is critical for their understanding. You are free to consult any book or professor to find the topics. Please also list what courses cover your selected topics. List the course number and title of the course.
Student responses came in different forms, some of them listing topics and others describing certain aspects of subject matter in other courses. Following is a list of representative responses. 1. Ether as anesthetic (NUR 320, Nursing Care) 2. Enzyme levels in blood (NUR 303, Pharmacology I) 3. Reactions of acids and bases (NUR 650, Acute Care Nursing) 4. Energy yield from glucose (NUR 105, Nutrition) 5. Make of bone and muscle (BIO 221, Anatomy and Physiology) 6. Mechanisms of resistance to diseases (BIO 422, Immunology) 7. Medicine and prescriptions (NUR 304, Pharmacology II) 8. Psychopharmacology (PSY 101, General Psychology) 9. Radioisotopes (BIO 252, Medical Microbiology) 10. Fiber dyeing (TET 302, Dyeing) 11. The effects of light on the chemical structure of paint (All ARH) 12. Acid rain and its effects on Greek statuary (ARH 101)
Question 2. Provide a written justification for one of the topics listed in question 1. Your justification should be fairly detailed and convincing. The one topic that I can justify as having a major importance to studying chemistry is nutrition. In chemistry there are several ways that nutrition can be broken down. The importance of energy to an individual’s body and how they should go about getting it starts by studying the aspects of chemistry. You also look at how proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and vitamins act as micro-nutrients. And how minerals act as nutrients. In nutrition you need to be able to understand how the body works and why it reacts to the chemicals we are responsible of putting in our own bodies. I have to be honest, until doing this assignment I never thought chemistry to be of importance to what I was going to do with the rest of my life. It is now clear why I need to take two semesters of chemistry in my college career. Out of many topics in which chemistry plays an important role in nursing, one involves the acidity of gastric juice and enzymes in the stomach necessary for proper digestion. However, the high acidity can cause problems such as heartburn and indigestion, or in more severe cases, stomach ulcers. The most important topic is the study of drugs and prescriptions; pharmacology. A nurse must have the knowledge of how drugs work with your body’s chemistry. What if a nurse has to put together a prescription dosage for a patient which involves the mixing of drugs? Doctors are not always perfect and a nurse should always cover herself by checking the correct dosage. He/she can-
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In the Classroom not do that without the knowledge. That nurse could potentially kill the patient if the right amount of drugs is mixed. The nurse should also be familiar with the chemistry of the drugs and how they will react with the patient’s body. A certain patient may have an allergic reaction to a drug and could die if taken. A nurse must be aware at all times of the patient and the drugs given. As a student interested in automotive design, I have an opportunity to use chemical concepts in a number of different ways. As an engineering major my uses for chemistry are innumerable, yet I also need chemistry in my art major as well. For instance, there is much I can learn about dyes and certain paints from organic chemistry. As an engineer, however, more aspects certainly come into play. One particular aspect that immediately comes to mind is the Hydrogen burning engine. This would involve complex hydrogen bonding, but would be theoretically more efficient in a number of different ways. Of all the topics I have listed above I believe the study of “enzyme levels in blood” is the most important for anyone working in the medical field. Enzymes are found in the interior of cells, therefore, their concentration in blood serum is normally very low. However, enzyme levels rise when a cell dies either through disease or injury. When a patient is sick blood work is done. Being a nurse I want to help my patient as much as possible, being informed on blood levels is a way for me to best know their condition and in turn how to care for them. A medical diagnosis of the blood enzyme level could tell if a person has: Bone disease, prostate cancer, liver disease, heart disease, pancreatic disorder, etc. I believe this information is vital in the treatment of my patient not only the physical way I care for them but also the psychological way I interact with them. An example of the use of Chemistry in a nurse’s day is bedside glucose monitoring (BGM). Nurses need to be able to recognize changes in, not only glucose levels, but in many intravenous substances. Nurses need to be able to recognize potential problems. They need to be aware of potential reactions a patient might have to medications, foods, etc. that should not be combined. After finding out some of this information, I have learned that Chemistry is used in many things that I hadn’t realized was even a form of Chemistry. I knew nursing involved Chemistry, I just didn’t know how much it was used every day. Textile Technology is the study of fibers. In studying the fibers one needs to know the important parts of Chemistry. For example formulas help one in dyeing, finishing, etc. … Also one must know what can be mixed together and what can’t. This is important because one wouldn’t want to mess up a piece of material. One also must know the precautions of each chemical. All the fabrics need to be bleached with a certain bleach. Not every fabric can
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be bleached with the same kind. If it is not bleached with the right one the fabric could be ruined. The chemical structures are also important in this major. In working with chemicals to dye and finish one must need to know what chemicals are used. This is the reason why the chemical concepts are important to textile Technology. The restoration of works of art involves quite a bit of chemistry. Although one does not need to understand chemical concepts in order to understand the methods of art restoration, a knowledge of chemistry gives one a much clearer idea of what goes into the restoration of an oil painting, for example. Chemistry is not essential to Art History, but it helps to give a broader understanding of the subject.
The result of the exercise was exciting in terms of improved classroom attendance, decrease in the attrition rate, and improved grades. Although I did not keep attendance records, I observed a significant increase in class attendance throughout the semester. I realize that a one-year limited data set makes it difficult to make any statistical prediction of the outcome of this approach. However, the experience can be considered as a novel approach to get nonscience majors interested in learning chemical principles, which is very much needed for their educational experience. If the approach is applied at other institutions and its effectiveness is reported over time, it could find widespread use as a teaching tool not only for chemistry but for other core subjects as well. In the final analysis, it seemed that getting students convinced of the relevance of a chemistry course to their majors helped increase their classroom participation and also produced tangible results in terms of improved subject retention and grades. The exercise, therefore, appears to be a worthwhile effort in tackling the apathy of nonscience majors towards chemistry. It is quite likely that the approach will work for other science and math courses where such apathy exists. Acknowledgments I thank Ralph Tykodi, Margaret Wechter, and Cathy Neto for reading the manuscript and making suggestions. Literature Cited 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1988, 65, 935. Lagowski, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, 971. Gregory, E. J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 1992, 21, 223–225. Seymore, E. J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 1992, 21, 230–238. Service, R. F. Science 1994, 226, 856–858. Singh, B. R. J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, 432–434. Walhout, J. S.; Heinschel, J. J. Chem. Educ. 1993, 69, 483–487. Brennan, M. B. Chem. Eng. News 1996, 74(4), 28–30.
Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 76 No. 9 September 1999 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu
