In the Classroom
An Integrated Professional and Transferable Skills Course for Undergraduate Chemistry Students S. Salman Ashraf* and Sayed A. M. Marzouk Department of Chemistry, UAE University, P.O. Box 17551, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates *
[email protected] Ihsan A. Shehadi* Department of Chemistry, University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 27272, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates *
[email protected] Brian M. Murphy Department of Life and Physical Sciences, Athlone Institute of Technology, Dublin Road, Athlone, Co. Westmeath, Republic of Ireland (I.A.S.).
One of the main goals of the higher education system is to produce productive citizens that integrate into the workforce and positively contribute to the development of the nation. Universities have historically designed curricula to instill theoretical knowledge as well as technological skills in their graduates. However, a growing body of evidence has shown that, although equipped with theoretical knowledge, most chemistry graduates lack skills that are essential for being efficient and productive members of the workforce (1). These set of skills have been collectively called “transferable skills” and may include effective oral- and written-communication skills, critical-thinking skills, effective team working, ability to use data acquisition systems, and data manipulation and analytical skills. A survey of educational journals shows that some chemistry departments have started to address this issue and have included various criticalthinking as well as communication-skills courses in their undergraduate curricula (2-6). The Department of Chemistry at UAE University1 continuously carries out educational outcome assessments to ensure that the departmental goals (see Appendix A in the supporting information) and objectives of the program are met. These academic assessments are based on a multiphase, five-year cycle. During each cycle, selected educational outcomes are assessed with different tools during each phase. Assessment tools that are used to evaluate educational outcomes include in-house standardized exit exams, graduate students surveys, students' portfolios, comprehensive reports and presentations from students' research projects, and alumni surveys. One major finding during the latest phase of educational assessment in the department was the lack of some essential skills in our chemistry graduates and graduating seniors. These conclusions were drawn based on the finding that three of the educational outcomes were not being achieved (see Appendix A in the supporting information for more details): • Work competently as a chemist conforming to the highest recognized international standards in professional attitudes, work ethics, teamwork, self-dependence, and observing safety and environmental regulations in operation in the profession worldwide.
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• Illustrate critical thinking with effective communication and computer skills. • Integrate attitude and values toward understanding of professional and ethical responsibility.
Hence, a course was specifically designed to address the identified deficiencies and to prepare our graduates for the real-life workplace and challenges. The new course has been incorporated in the curriculum as a requirement and is normally taken by chemistry students in the second year of the program. On the basis of the positive feedback from students as well as graduationproject instructors, this new course appears to be achieving its designed objectives and has been successful in teaching our students valuable professional and transferable skills. Not surprisingly, incorporation of such courses into chemistry programs has also been recommended by the ACS (7), as well as other studies (1-6). Course Overview During the development of this course, we were surprised that we could not find published (journals or Web) examples of a course that would address all the topics we wanted to teach our students; hence, this course is different than what others have developed. It should, however, be mentioned that there are quite a few examples of reports dealing with specific units or topics that we wanted to cover. For example, Bieron et al. (8) and Barlag and Nyasulu (9) described their aim of teaching chemistry students how to use MS Excel for data manipulation. Meyer (10) also described a scientific communication course for chemistry students stressing oral and poster presentations as well as the use of ISIS Draw software. Inclusion of scientific communication skills (oral and poster presentations) in an advanced physical chemistry course has also been reported by Renaud et al. (11). Because the strategic vision of UAE University places a strong emphasis on the use of Internet technology (IT) and laptops in the instruction process, we developed this course as a “laptop-course” that relies extensively on both the Internet and computer use. Because the course is taken by students early in
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In the Classroom
their education, it also includes “general study skills” that helps them in studying for their other chemistry courses. The course involves several different chemistry-specific components: introduction to chemistry professional bodies and organizations; general study skills; communication skills (both written and oral); critical-thinking exercises; group and project work; project management; time management; chemical information retrieval; experience in using tailored IT packages for chemistry; and chemistry-specific computational software packages, including chemical structure modeling. The individual units can be presented by chemistry faculty through a combination of interactive active learning workshops, group work, presentations, and hands-on sessions in the computer laboratory. The course offers flexibility in that instructors can choose to emphasize different aspects of chemistry in the different subunits and units. For example, a biochemist instructor may choose to introduce GenBank, protein translation tools as well as protein structure databases to the students in the “chemical information retrieval” unit, whereas an inorganic chemistry faculty may get students to use the Cambridge Structural Database. In addition, the course is well suited to be taught by a team of instructors, which would further enhance the value of the topics delivered to the students. The mapping of the course objectives and outcomes with the chemistry department goals are detailed in Appendix B in the supporting information.
briefing notes are distributed in week 2, with the project presented by each group and subsequent discussion in week 3. Unit 2: (Weeks 4-5): Word-Processing for Chemists In the second unit, the emphasis is on aspects of wordprocessing required by chemists. Use of MS Word, specifically with regard to technical and scientific writing and features that are of most relevance to chemists are explored, such as inserting chemical structures or drawing, use of text and graphics boxes, use of equation editor, subscripts, superscripts, tables, and so forth. In addition, students learn how to format a manuscript to conform to a specific scientific journal's guidelines for authors. Two-dimensional representation of chemical structures are investigated, such as how to build a 2D representation of a molecule using ISIS Draw and Chem Draw Ultra and how to export and insert the structures as objects into professional reports, posters, and presentations. Unit 3: (Weeks 6-8): Spreadsheet Applications in Chemistry Using MS Excel and Origin In the third unit, the emphasis is on aspects of spreadsheet applications specifically required by chemists: • Introduction to function wizards and graphing data, statistical functions, and regression analysis • Introduction to macros and VBA with selected examples are taken here that may include case studies in physical chemistry (kinetics, titration curves, etc.), solid-state chemistry, and so forth • Importing and processing instrumental data; data acquisition: familiarity with data acquisition protocols in chemistry using LabView programs and LoggerPro data acquisition interfaces from Vernier, Inc.; introduction to the usage of different sensors and understanding how sensors transfer raw data from experimental setup to display. Sensors may include light, CO2, pH, O2, temperature, and pressure transducers.
Course Content The main aim of this course is to provide chemistry students with a wide range of generic, transferable skills, essential in and beyond the chemistry profession and to prepare students adequately for their internship (in the last year of the chemistry degree program) and later professionally in the workplace. Two books are assigned for the course: A Short Guide to Writing About Chemistry (12) and Excel for Chemists: A Comprehensive Guide (13). Unit 1: (Weeks 1-3): Introduction to the Course; Auxiliary Laboratory Skills; Generic Skills and Communication Skills In this first unit, the following areas are explored: • The importance of professional and transferable skills to chemists • General study skills, including how to take lecture notes, how to read a textbook, how to keep a laboratory notebook, and how to write up a laboratory experiment • Introduction to the professional bodies in the chemical sciences (e.g., ACS, RSC, IUPAC, etc.) • How to write a standard ACS chemistry-type resume and cover letter for a job application and job-searching tips
A group project is also carried out. Students are introduced for the first time to transferable skills such as reading a scientific article, basic oral communication, group and team work, criticalthinking skills, and presentation skills. In this project, students are presented with an industrial scenario in which a specific problem needs solving by understanding the chemistry of the processes involved. Students are given all the resources they need to answer specific questions about the chemical processes involved (including an article to read) prior to developing a short to long-term strategic plan for the company. The resources and the
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Unit 4: (Weeks 9-10): Chemical Information Retrieval In this unit, students explore how to retrieve chemical information through a number of sources, with emphasis on how to conduct a literature search: • How to carry out a literature search in chemistry • Search tools on the Internet • Introduction to selected chemistry databases: SciFinder Scholar, Chemical Abstracts (CAS), Cambridge Structural Database, Beilstein, Protein Database, etc. • Introduction to scientific databases: Materials Science, Medline, Polymers: Property Database, etc. • Introduction to citation databases: Science Citation Index, Scopus, etc. • Introduction to chemistry journals (online and printed material at the library): Science Direct, Dialog, Academic Search Premier, Wiley InterScience, Springer-Link, etc.
Unit 5: (Weeks 11-13): Presentation Skills for Chemists In this unit, students learn how to present and disseminate their work in a number of areas:
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• Use of MS PowerPoint to create a scientific presentation. Features that are of most relevance to chemists are focused
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In the Classroom Table 1. Course Assessment Tools Unit
Assessment Tool
Unit 1: Introduction to the course: auxiliary laboratory skills; generic skills, and communication skills (10%)
Take home assignment on resume and covering letter for job-application - (5%). Group Work: Industrial Case Study - (5%).
Unit 2: Word-processing for chemists (15%)
In-class assignment in which students will be requested to create and insert a 2D chemical drawing into a word document - (10%). Take home assignment in which students will be asked to format some text (given to them by the instructor) such that it conforms to the requirements of a specific chemistry journal (different texts will be used for each student) - (5%).
Unit 3: Spreadsheet applications in chemistry using Microsoft Excel and Origin (25%)
Project in which students are requested to accomplish at least two tasks using a spreadsheet program - (10%). Project to assemble a data acquisition system and generate, import and process the obtained data - (10%). In-class Blackboard quiz - (5%).
Unit 4: Chemical information retrieval (10%)
Take home project on a mini-literature search - (5%). In-class exercise on using either the Cambridge Structural Database or Protein Database - (5%).
Unit 5: Presentation skills for chemists (15%)
Take home assignment in which students will be required to create an MS PowerPoint presentation (PP) on a chemistry topic (different topics will be used for each student) - (5%). Poster presentation (same topic as PP presentation) - (5%). Creation of a Web site (same topic as PP presentation and poster) - (5%).
Unit 6: Thinking in 3D in chemistry (10%)
In-class hands-on project - (5%). Take home assignment - (5%).
Unit 7: Collective Communication! - Annual review presentation (bringing all the skill sets together) (15%)
Overall project - (15%).
upon, for example, inserting drawings and figures. Students learn how to make a formal scientific presentation based on a topic of current research interest in contemporary chemistry • How to create a poster and how to create a simple Web site. Students choose a topic of current interest in the field of chemical sciences and learn how to create a poster on that topic. They are exposed to different styles of posters that are found at a scientific meeting. They then create a Web page that has this information and put the Web page on the Internet, using MS FrontPage or another suitable Web editor.
Evaluation and Survey
Assessment
To assess the course from the point of view of the students, we carried out a small survey of 20 female students who had taken this course from four different instructors over the course of four semesters.2 The results of the survey are tabulated in Table 2 and graphically shown in Figure 1. As can be seen from the table and figure, most of the students liked the course and responded positively to the survey. The majority of the students found the class useful and felt that it taught them new and valuable skills that they felt would help them in their future chemistry courses. Another positive outcome of the course is that the students expressed that they liked their major more after having taken this class. An interesting observation from the survey was that about a quarter of the students felt that the class was too much work and took up a lot of their time. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it implies that the students were spending a significant amount of time on the various mini-projects. We were also glad to see that ∼80% of the students felt that this was one of the most interesting courses they had taken thus far. Interestingly, the survey seems to suggest that having some flexibility in the specific topics covered would be useful, as about 40% of the students felt that there were some topics that they would have liked, but were not covered. In addition to a positive student survey, faculty members in the department (including the authors) who take on “research project” students have noticed a significant improvement in the quality of students, specifically in their ability to effectively use MS Excel, carry out data manipulation, and make effective poster and oral presentations.
This course can be assessed in a variety of ways by the instructors teaching the course; however, we adopted a grading system that is consistent with our other courses as outlined in Table 1.
Specific Examples for Unit 3 As mentioned earlier, the nature of the course allows for different instructors to teach the various units with slightly
Unit 6: (Weeks 14-15): Thinking in 3D in Chemistry In this unit, students explore the world of 3D representations of chemical structures: • Introduction to molecular graphics, molecular modeling, energy minimization, and manipulating of molecular files • Chemistry and information technology: introduction to different chemical and protein databases and tools used in structural analysis
Unit 7: (Week 16): Presentation The students give a short oral and poster presentation to their colleagues, covering any exciting new contemporary area of chemistry with commercial potential. CVs are distributed and questions are asked.
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Table 2. Results of the Student Survey (20 Respondents)a Strongly agree Statement
Strongly disagree
5
4
3
2
1
1
I found this course very useful
65
10
20
5
0
2
The course taught me new and valuable skills
75
10
10
5
0
3
I already knew most of the content presented
25
20
25
20
10
4
I would recommend this course to my friends
65
25
15
0
0
5
I think this course will help me with my other classes
60
35
0
0
0
6
The course was too much work and took too much time
0
25
30
20
20
7
There were many other important topics that we did not cover
15
25
35
15
5
8
This was one of the most interesting courses I have taken so far
40
40
10
0
5
9
I liked chemistry more after taking this class
30
25
35
5
5
10
It was not a very interesting and fun course
5
0
5
25
65
a
Data expressed in percentage (%).
Figure 1. Graphs showing the summary of student evaluations of the course.
different emphasis. We describe in detail (in the supporting information) two different examples how unit 3 (MS Excel and data manipulation) could be taught. We have found them useful for our students and may be of use to others when implementing this course. The first example deals with using data acquisition cards and the importance of proper sampling rate when acquiring data. The other example deals with importing data from a computercontrolled UV-visible spectrophotometer and manipulating data in MS Excel. Both of these examples are relatively easy to incorporate into this unit, without relying on expensive equipment or complicated setups. Moreover, the second example (UV-H2O2 degradation of an aromatic dye as a model pollutant) can be used to start a discussion about the usefulness of chemistry to solve “real-life” issues.
new and flexible course with seven units focuses on teaching students communication skills, critical-thinking skills, data acquisition, manipulation, and analytical skills, as well as chemical information retrieval and use of chemistry-specific software packages. Feedback from students and faculty members has been positive. We strongly feel that chemistry departments that do not have a similar course should consider incorporating this type of course in their chemistry curricula. Notes 1. The B.S. degree in Chemistry at UAE University is based on curricular guidelines from the American Chemical Society and the program is accredited by the Canadian Society of Chemistry. 2. Although UAE University caters to both male and female students (through gender-segregated campuses), the majority of the students (∼80%) are female; hence, the survey was based on the female students who represent the overwhelming majority in the chemistry department.
Conclusion In summary, a new course has been developed to address the lack of some skills in our graduating chemistry students. This
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Literature Cited 1. Kerr, S.; Runquist, O. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82, 231–233. 2. Kerr, W. J.; Murray, R. E. G.; Moore, B. D; Nonhebel, D. C. J. Chem. Educ. 2000, 77, 191–194. 3. Bailey, P. D. Univ. Chem. Educ. 1997, 1, 31–36. 4. Kalivas, J. H. J. Chem. Educ. 2005, 82, 895–897. 5. Roecker, L. J. Chem. Educ. 2007, 84, 1380–1384. 6. Walczak, M. M.; Jackson, P. T. J. Chem. Educ. 2007, 84, 1385–1389. 7. American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training. Undergraduate Professional Education in Chemistry: Guidelines and Evaluation Procedures; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2008. 8. Bieron, J. F.; McCarthy, P. J.; Kermis, T. W. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 1021–1022.
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9. Barlag, R.; Nyasulu, F. J. Chem. Educ. 2010, 87, 78–80. 10. Meyer, G. M. J. Chem. Educ. 2003, 80, 1174–1177. 11. Renaud, J.; Squier, C.; Larsen, S. C. J. Chem. Educ. 2006, 83, 1029–1031. 12. Beall, H.; Trimbur, J. A Short Guide to Writing About Chemistry, 2nd ed.; Longman: London, 2000. 13. Billo, E. J. Excel for Chemists: A Comprehensive Guide, 2nd ed.; Wiley-VCH: New York, 2001.
Supporting Information Available UAE University chemistry department goals and educational outcomes; course objectives; two examples of how unit 3 could be taught. This material is available via the Internet at http://pubs. acs.org.
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