A Chemistry Course with a Laboratory for Non-Science Majors

In the Classroom

A Chemistry Course with a Laboratory for Non–Science Majors Emeric Schultz Department of Chemistry, Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, PA 17815; [email protected]

A growing consensus in the science community is the need to address the science education of nonscientists (1, 2). Concern about the education of nonscientists by scientists is driven, in part, by the perceived need to better educate the public, especially future decision-makers, about the continued importance of supporting the science enterprise. In principle one would want to offer courses that interest and excite students— courses that give students, if not a love of the subject material, at least a respect for its importance. Several communications in this Journal have highlighted efforts in this area (3–7 ). Unfortunately, however, many courses for non-majors still do not “connect” with their clientele (8–10). Bloomsburg University (BU) has a general education requirement of 12 credit hours (generally four 3-credit courses) in the science and mathematics area. However, there is no requirement for a laboratory science. Courses can be taken from a smorgasbord of offerings in several departments. A common “scenario” for a non–science major is to take the four “easiest” courses one can manage. The current nonscience-majors course offered by the chemistry department, Chemistry and the Citizen, is a 3-credit mass lecture course (140 students) that presents chemistry in what some would call a “kinder and gentler way”. A concerted effort at “relevance” is made and there is a significant incorporation of demonstrations to liven up the presentations. Whether it works is another question. This paper describes a model laboratory science course (with a primarily chemistry focus) that breaks the current paradigm of a lab science course, yet conveys the heart and soul of the science enterprise, scientific discovery experienced. This course could serve as a model for institutions aspiring to address the issue of scientific literacy in a new way. Development of “Frontiers in Science and Technology” Frontiers in Science and Technology had its origin in my experiences in attending a workshop entitled “Introduction of Molecular Biology into the Undergraduate Curriculum”. The original purpose was to learn the latest in biotechnology and incorporate this material into the biochemistry course taught at BU. As the only chemist in a group of 20 biologists, I soon became the designated authority on explaining what was happening on a molecular level in all this nifty biology! Some of the explanations involved entropy effects, the total strengths of weak interactions, and changes in net partial charge upon changing pH. When I saw the appreciation of understanding on this level on the part of most of the biologists, I recognized the potential of this material, labeled biology, as a vehicle for teaching chemistry. Concurrent with this experience, the Honors and Scholars program at BU had decided to move toward a requirement for a laboratory science course for all students in the program. I wrote a proposal for such a course and simultaneously wrote an NSF-ILI grant proposal entitled Implementation of a Model Course for Non–Science Majors Incorporating Modern Molecular Biology Techniques, Molecular Modeling and Instrumental

Analysis. Both were approved and materials for the course were developed. The first experimental offering of the course was to a class of 15 incoming freshman honors students in the fall of 1996. In the fall of 1998, the course was again offered to 15 honors students (freshman and sophomores) as an integral part of the honors program. Breaking Paradigms and Establishing New Ones The structure, content, and pedagogy of Frontiers breaks several paradigms normally associated with chemistry and chemistry lab courses and applies some of the ideas suggested in an earlier communication (11). Each “paradigm” is given below in a paraphrased form, its meaning is explained, and the manner in which Frontiers breaks that paradigm is described. Chemistry drives biology. As chemists we typically view the normal paradigm as chemistry being a vehicle for better understanding (supporting) biology. Biology degrees require chemistry, chemistry degrees do not require biology. This may continue to be the case in terms of curriculum. However, on the research front in chemistry, the tools and concepts of biology have become an integral part of the everyday experience of many chemists (as any casual reader of C&E News can witness). Frontiers takes some almost universally appealing biology and “dissects” that material to reveal the fascinating underlying chemistry. Lab is lab and lecture is lecture. I teach (in addition to Frontiers), the first course in the general chemistry sequence, as well as courses in my specialty, biochemistry. All these courses have “attached” labs. I have stopped being amazed at how students can compartmentalize the lab and lecture experiences despite heroic efforts on our part to connect them. Most experiments in science courses are developed to fit into 2-, 3-, and 4-hour time slots called laboratory periods. In the real world, scientists don’t do experiments at arbitrary times for a single block of time. Instead, they work on projects that involve answering specific questions driven by curiosity. Whereas on paper Frontiers is a 3-credit course with 2 hours of lecture and 2 hours of lab, in actuality laboratory “events” occur in lecture “periods” and lecture “events” occur during lab “periods”. The 2-hour “experimental” part of the course occurs during the scheduled lab on a weekday morning. The lecture portions are scheduled for two 1-hour blocks in the afternoons, with one of these afternoon sessions occurring on the same day as a morning lab session. The nature of the experimentation, especially during the “cloning” project, is wonderfully set up to start an experiment in the morning, to continue it between the morning and afternoon sessions, and to finish it (obtain and discuss the results) in the afternoon session. The lab experience is linear. Typical labs have a certain predetermined order of execution. We start with a written experimental exercise the student is expected to read before coming to class. At the start of the lab period there is a prelab that further describes the mechanics of the experiment (and often rehashes the write-up because most students have not

JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 77 No. 8 August 2000 • Journal of Chemical Education

1001

In the Classroom

thoroughly read it!). The experiment is then done with some goal in mind. The final product of the lab is some type of report by the student on the results obtained and the meaning of these results. Frontiers sets all this on its head. There are experimental write-ups, some of which come from an advanced course in molecular biology (12). A “novice” guide that puts into as simple language as possible the concepts and techniques to be used in the day’s experiment accompanies each such writeup. Once again there is a recognition that most of the students, even if they read these, will have only a marginal idea of what is going on (before the experiment). Most of the experimentation in this course (as in most lab courses) involves a significant amount of waiting. That being the case, why even mess with prelab? Students get started right away with minimal prelab. They are told to just follow the simple set of directions whether they understand what they are doing or not (most don’t). Waiting for something to happen is the standard for many lab experiences (crystallizations, distillations, chromatography) and, in my opinion, the reason so many students hate lab—they are inactive! When there is a break in the lab activity we discuss what has happened, what is happening, or what is going to happen (or all three, depending on what is needed and how much time is available). Students learn in the context of doing. I call the manner in which experiments are done “experimentation on the fly” and I refer to the overall experience as “high-density laboratory”. There is far less dead time, students are involved in some way in their experiment (or another activity) at all times, and they like it! Build from small to large. The typical first chemistry course starts with fundamental particles and builds up to molecules. For a biology or biochemistry major, that building process takes 4 semesters before biochemistry is reached. Frontiers is no different in one way: the first lecture starts with the ultimate small, a neutral ball of matter before the Big Bang. On the other hand, the structures of simple covalent molecules and molecular ions are “made” by students using a molecular modeling “expert system” and the “rules of bonding, geometry,

and polarity” are deduced from the results obtained by the expert system. The traditional approach would be to develop the concepts of electronic structure, VSEPR, and electronegativity and use these to make Lewis structures; this would be followed by geometry, followed by polarity. In a similar fashion the molecular reasons for why DNA has the properties that it does starts with the double-stranded structure of DNA (which all students have been saturated with), and works “backwards” to molecular level H-bonding. Course Content and Pedagogy A broad outline of lecture topics and lab exercises in Frontiers is given in Table 1. I will provide a more detailed course syllabus upon request. Brief descriptions of each portion of the course are presented below, with greater emphasis on the laboratory portion because of its nonstandard form and content.

The “Lecture” The lecture portion of the course follows an evolutionary story line, starting with the Big Bang and leading to electrons, protons, hydrogen, and helium. This is followed by the formation of first-generation stars from this “debris”. The development is largely descriptive, although nuclear equations are balanced in terms of the particles involved and the connection between matter and energy is emphasized. The story continues to the development of a protoplanet that becomes Earth. The manner in which the forces of chemistry gave rise to the chemical mix in the primordial earth and how life evolved from this mix of “inorganic” building blocks is discussed. Again the treatment is largely descriptive. Classes of chemical substances are discussed, building toward complex biological macromolecules. The importance of structure, in terms of properties, is emphasized and students are expected to understand the essential rules of bonding. Molecular modeling done concurrently in the lab supports this treatment. About midway, there is a transition to molecular biology that complements the cloning project in the lab. It is at this point that the lecture and laboratory “agendas” become inter-

Table 1. Frontiers in Science and Technology Overview

1002

Lecture Topic

Concurrent Lab Exercise

Introduction; probability and statistics; origin of the universe

Dice-shaking

Elementary particles; creation of the elements

Half-life of a radioisotope

Elements on Earth; evolution of Earth; appearance of life

—

Types and properties of matter

Molecular modeling I

Inorganic matter: kinds, structures, shapes

—

Organic matter: kinds, structures, shapes

Molecular modeling II

Important biochemicals: kinds, structures, shapes

—

DNA

Isolation of DNA from a bioluminescent microbe

RNA

—

Proteins

Quantification of DNA

How life works

Learning a technique: agarose electrophoresis

How life continues

Restriction digestion of DNA samples: model experiment

—

Restriction digestion of vector and insert DNA

How new forms of life arise

Ligation of vector and insert DNA

Biotechnology—what it is

Transformation experiments

—

Isolation of a green fluorescent protein from a clone

Biotechnology—applications

Miniprep of isolated clones; restriction digestion and analysis

Biotechnology—hopes and fears

—

Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 77 No. 8 August 2000 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu

In the Classroom

twined. The technical aspects of biotechnology are developed more in the lab context than in the lecture. The historical biotechnology coverage is done in the lecture and includes a sampling of the most recent advances. The course ends with two days of discussions on the implications of biotechnology and an informal debate about its merits, limitations, and consequences. Courses that contain components of either the evolutionary story line or the biotechnology emphasis have been described in this Journal (13–15).

The “Lab” The laboratory consists of 3 interrelated projects done by research groups of three students. Assignments to groups are based on information provided on surveys filled out by students on the first day of class. Attention is paid to having a balance in overall aptitude and verbal and math skills, as indicated by previous course experiences and grades. Lab notebooks are provided to each group of students and general guidelines are given on what to record. Specific guidelines are given for each experiment. The group as a whole is responsible for the notebook and a common grade is given to all students in each group for the effort made with the lab notebook. Lab notebooks are handed in periodically for evaluation. An important component of the notebook is the last section in each experiment, entitled “Feedback”. All students in the group are asked to specifically indicate what they (individually) thought of the lab, what they learned from it, and how they would improve it (in terms of both the actual experiment and how it was presented). The initial experiment of the first project involves dice shaking. It is ideally positioned after the first lecture in the course. Students shake various different-sided dice and determine the “half-life” for each type of die (the average number of shakes it takes for half the dice to show a selected number). This experiment is more fully described elsewhere (16 ). It is great fun and a wonderful start to the course. The results are numbers (half-lives) that verify the common-sense notion that the more sides a die set has, the longer it will take to shake these dice until a certain preselected number comes up on all the dice in the set. A spreadsheet is used to enter data and a graph describing the data is obtained (graph production is usually a first-time experience for the vast majority in the class!). Then a simple “law” predicting die behavior is obtained and an analogy is set up for the next experiment, involving radioactive decay. In this experiment the idea of probability and error is also introduced: sometimes the set of 8-sided dice shake out faster than the 6-sided! This plants the seed for the important concept of entropy. The second experiment in the first project involves the determination of the half-life of a radioisotope (16 ). The law obtained is of the same form as that for dice shaking, and students are left to ponder the significance of this result in terms of dealing with the problem of radioactive waste. Just as the half-life of dice cannot be changed by the manner in which the shaking is done, so too, the time it takes for radioactive material to decay cannot be affected. Since the actual time for experimentation is minimal for both labs, a significant amount of time can be spent teaching students how to use spreadsheets, create graphs, and interpret results. The second project involves molecular modeling. There are two exercises. Both involve using the CAChe molecular

modeling program. There is a short tutorial session on how to use the program in class and then student groups go through menu-driven exercises. In the first exercise, students build small molecules such as methane, ammonia, water, and carbon dioxide and molecular ions such as hydronium and hydroxide. The “bonding rules” for the elements C, H, N, O, P, and S are deduced, as are the geometries that emerge with certain types of bonding (single vs double). Some larger organic molecules such as benzene, cyclohexane, ethanol, and hexylamine are then built and their structures are investigated. Students can investigate certain skeletons that can apply to a formula they are given to work with; the computer is programmed to “beautify” the structures by adding hydrogens (i.e., give complete, correct structural formulas). Finally, the structures of biochemical building blocks such as amino acids, sugars, and nucleic acid bases are investigated. Students select names of these building blocks from a menu and the corresponding structures with correct bonding and geometry are displayed. Students are directed to describe each structure made. Concepts such as isomers and planarity emerge from this exercise. In the second exercise of the second project, each structure made in the first exercise is investigated for the attribute of polarity. Each structure is analyzed for charge density by a component of the CAChe program. The “pictures” are presented so as to indicate both the sign and the magnitude of the charge on each atom in a structure. Students are then challenged to cut and paste the bases adenine and thymine (and cytosine and guanine) onto the same page and then manipulate (by rotation and translation) the structures until the best matches between + and ᎑ regions on the two bases are obtained. The basis of the genetic code is discovered in this fashion. Students also investigate some other molecular interactions, such as how a small molecule (substrate) can fit (or not fit) into a “pocket” of a large molecule (an enzyme). The third lab module, the cloning project, takes up the remainder of the course. The objective of this project is to move the gene responsible for bioluminescence from one bacterium into another. This project mimics fairly accurately the types of activities that go under the rubric of genetic engineering. It is highly relevant and topical, and students are quite excited when they are told that they will be doing this “high-tech” stuff. The project begins with each group taking a glowing flask from the shaker in a dark room. This experience has great impact. The manner in which this first experiment is done in the lab is a very nice example of “experimentation on the fly”. The contents of the flasks are poured into centrifuge bottles and centrifuged for 10 minutes. During that wait time, students are given an explanation of what is happening. This presentation is “put on pause” the instant the centrifuge stops. A short workup period is followed by a 10-minute incubation, which gives time for more talk. When the lead group’s incubation has gone for 10 minutes, it’s time to stop talking. There is another 30-minute incubation later on—once again, time to talk. The final product is redissolved DNA. Although there is some waiting around, it is minimal compared to when the same experiment is done with a full prelab: 90–100 minutes by this method (a 2-h lab) vs 150–170 minutes (a 3-h lab). The most challenging lab in the course is the next one, involving the determination of the concentration of DNA in


1003

In the Classroom

their preparations. Many students simply do not understand proportions, dilutions, or correlation between the amount of a material and a number called absorbance. There is also widespread confusion between absorbance numbers and wavelength numbers. Notwithstanding these difficulties, an effort has to be made in this area—a chemistry lab course without a quantitative dimension to me is simply unthinkable. Extensive demonstrations, as well as a concrete method involving fluorescence visualization of DNA adducts on agarose plates, help somewhat. The idea of a standard curve is also introduced in this experiment. The next two experiments focus on learning agarose electrophoresis and the properties of DNA in the lab context. These two labs are the first of 5 in which experiments are set up in the morning and results are obtained in the afternoon period (and also later in the week). Electrophoresis and incubations are usually run in this way. Other times during lab that would traditionally be waiting periods are used as previously described. Because of the nature of this experimentation, there are opportunities to intercalate what would normally be lecture material during a lab period. This further blurs the artificial separation of lab and lecture experiences; concepts and theory can be connected to lab practice (students are told to bring both lab and lecture notebooks to all sessions of the course). The pedagogic rationale for these two labs is to build students’ confidence in doing what are initially viewed as intricate manipulations. In addition, student understanding of how to interpret a gel plate, how to make a standard curve of known-sized samples, and how this information can be used to determine the size of unknown samples has to be developed before students are asked to do the same with “their” sample of DNA. In subsequent weeks students do the following: 1. Restriction digests on their isolated DNA and also on a plasmid. 2. Ligate the library of DNA fragments into the open plasmid to produce a library of recombinant DNAs. 3. Insert the recombinant DNAs into a host bacterium (transformation). 4. Screen the resulting bacterial colonies for transformants (clones). 5. Grow up bioluminescent and nonbioluminescent clones and isolate plasmid DNA. 6. Subject isolated plasmid DNA to restriction digestion, and after agarose electrophoresis, determine the size of both the gene for bioluminescence and another incorporated piece of DNA. 7. Isolate a green fluorescent protein in a model experiment.

The transformation component has been done with both a related model system (that always works) as well as with student clones. There are logistical (number of plates needed) and statistical (transformation efficiency) problems as well as a conceptual problem (the fairly difficult biology and chemistry involved) in doing the transformation from student clones. For this novice audience the model system works well enough. Transformation with the student clones can be done as a demonstration, with student help in streaking the copious number of plates (thus maintaining the students’ stake in the

1004

experiment—“Hey, the glower was on the plate that I streaked!”). The protein isolation is done to distinguish between the blueprint for a trait (gene = DNA) and the trait itself (ability to glow = protein).

Resources and Assessment There is no text for the first part of the lecture course. To my knowledge, no single text at the introductory nonscience-majors level covers sequentially physical and chemical evolution, the fundamentals of chemistry, and rudimentary organic and biochemistry. Extensive handouts from various sources and in-house materials are used for this part of the course. For the biotechnology portion there are several excellent texts. We currently use DNA Technology, The Awesome Skill (17 ). For the lab portion of the course, the first two projects come from experiments developed or modified at BU, and handouts are used. The cloning portion of the course uses as a resource Unraveling DNA, Molecular Biology for the Laboratory (12), a junior–senior-level lab manual in Molecular Biology. A novice guide handout accompanies each experiment from this manual. Assessment in the course emphasizes the lab; 40% of the grade is based directly on laboratory work. There are three components of this lab grade: a few individual reports and exercises (5%); group reports and especially the quality of the group laboratory notebook (30%) (all students in a group obtain the same grade); and an anonymous peer evaluation of group members by each other (5%). The remaining 60% of the grade comes from two midterm exams and a take-home “pre-final” (each 10%), and the final exam (30%). One-third of the value of each exam is derived from material related to the laboratory: for example, using a standard curve and a picture of a gel plate to determine the size of an unknown fragment of DNA. The overall contribution of the laboratory experience to the final grade in the course is therefore 60%. Evaluation of Course This course has now been offered two times to non– science majors in the Honors Program at BU. The average math SAT score for students enrolled in this course is 623 (range 480–730), and the average verbal score is 610 (range 520–700). The effectiveness of this course can be gauged both from the students’ evaluations completed at the end of the course and from student comments in the Feedback section of lab notebooks. The evaluation instrument was designed to elicit both quantitative and qualitative responses. The first six questions, in pairs, asked students to rate the following on a scale of 0 to 10: 1&2. My attitude toward science at the beginning (end) of the course. 3&4. My confidence level in learning science at the beginning (end) of the course. 5&6. My confidence level in doing science in the laboratory at the beginning (end) of the course.

Results are summarized in Table 2 in terms of the change from the beginning to the end (all positive) and the number of students having neutral or negative experiences in contrast


In the Classroom Table 2. Frontiers in Science and Technology Student Opinion Confidence Level for

Attitude toward Science

Learning Science

Doing Lab Science

Class of 96: change in opinion

+2.3

+1.5

+3.1

Class of 98: change in opinion

+1.6

+1.4

+2.9

11 9

14 7

7 14

Sample

No. of students with: Neutral or negative changes ( Σ = 30) +4 or larger changes ( Σ = 30)

to those having significantly positive experiences. For me the most important finding is the increase in confidence in doing laboratory science. Additionally, for about half the students, the increase in confidence level is impressive (+4 rating or higher on an 11-point scale). Some students go from a rating of 1 or 2 to 8, 9, or 10! This result is buttressed by a later question, in which students are asked which part of the course they liked more; 75% chose the lab. The end of the course evaluation and the Feedback section of the lab notebook allow students to comment extensively on what they like and dislike about the course and individual experiments. Students comment about enhanced confidence in the lab and an increased conceptual understanding of course material. A nice example of the former is in the area of agarose electrophoresis. Initial comments express both frustration and fear (of bad results) in having to pipet “into those tiny holes”. After 4 more rounds of electrophoresis, there are numerous comments like “I never thought I could do this, and now I can whip it off with no sweat.” A nice example of increased conceptual understanding is the following quote taken from a student Feedback comment: This lab [the second molecular modeling exercise] was an excellent expansion of molecular modeling I. By building on learned bonding rules gained in Molecular Modeling I, the application of these rules was easy. After constructing each molecule and reevaluating the molecule, we could observe the polarity. In the past, my high school teacher could never fully explain the concept of polarity. This lab really helped me to understand δ+ and δ᎑ portions …. For me personally, this lab cleared up years of confusion in one short hour.

Discussion In looking at this course, some may ask if it even belongs in a chemistry department; perhaps a more appropriate place would be as a biology offering. I strongly disagree. I believe that the time to draw limits on chemistry has long passed. It is, instead, time to expand the boundaries of our discipline. In fact, it is time to take back some of the “curricular turf ” that has been surrendered in the past, especially in the borderlands with biology. Frontiers takes an indirect approach toward developing chemistry concepts by using nontraditional approaches. Entropy and probability are core ideas in chemistry that most students do not encounter in fully developed form until the junior year (18). In Frontiers the probability idea is developed early with dice-shaking and radioactive decay. It is then applied to

explaining (i) how the nature of palindromic restriction sites can be used to predict the average size of DNA fragments (using math!) and (ii) how the rates of the processes of transcription and translation are limited. These are intuitive, concrete, mechanical types of phenomena that are easily modeled and that students can grasp and are in contrast to the abstract methods by which these subtle and challenging ideas are usually presented. The importance of the entropy idea as a factor in determining whether a process is favorable flows easily from this development. Weak attractions are another idea that most students in my science majors class have a very hard time with. Invariably, students get coverage in this area only after a complete treatment of bonding. In Frontiers, students first encounter weak attractions from determining the polarity of purine and pyrimidine bases and then making “connections” between complementary charged areas. It is a small step to basepairing and then another small step to evaluating how strong the attractions are between DNA “zippers” having different lengths and base contents. This is an idea that most students understand. A more thorough and rigorous treatment can follow (if desired). In Frontiers, the manner in which math and quantification are layered on also involves an indirect approach, typically through the graphing of experimental results from spreadsheets. The determination of a standard curve for the size of DNA fragments vs migration distance requires a log calculation; similarly, the determination of the size of an unknown DNA fragment represented by a band on a gel requires an inverse log calculation. Most students in this course are completely helpless in this area at the start, but have a pretty good operational idea of what is going on by the end of the course. The laboratory experience in Frontiers involves cooperative learning in groups (19, 20). To ensure that all members of a group participate in all tasks in an experiment, there is significant monitoring. For instance, each member of the group has to do all the different technical components of agarose electrophoresis. Although there are always some problems in group dynamics and logistics, this approach has been quite successful. First and foremost, each member of a group has a sense of ownership of the experiment, especially in the cloning project (students typically refer to “our DNA”). The recognition that there is some larger goal to be reached as each week goes by has a remarkable effect on group cohesiveness and commitment and the collective psychology in the lab. There is a sense of growth, especially in the cloning project, and students are more confident: they know they are doing a better job at electrophoresis because they can see nicer results. This contrasts to our second “general chem” course, which I characterize as “the technique of the day to obtain the number of the day using the equation of the day to write the lab report of the week”. Should I be surprised that students in my upper-level biochemistry course remember little from this course except having to write endless lab reports? A recent communication questioned whether introductory labs were even worth the effort (21). My experience with these non– science students has convinced me that we need to change the character of the lab instead. Perhaps a better approach in introductory (general) labs would be to emphasize a smaller set of techniques that students could work to master.


1005

In the Classroom

The last point I would like to make from my experience in developing and teaching this course is that we need to use the potential of the laboratory experience to its fullest. In the most recent offering of Frontiers there were two students who were taking other chemistry courses simultaneously. One, a biology major, had “slipped” into the course and was also enrolled in our first course for science majors. When queried, this student stated that he liked both courses but liked the lab in Frontiers much more. He is now considering becoming a chemistry major. The other student was simultaneously enrolled in the mass lecture course Chemistry and the Citizen. I did not know this until midway through the semester, when, at the start of class one day, students were talking about scheduling for the next semester and asked what courses I would recommend. I mentioned Chemistry and the Citizen and was startled when this student (of very modest demeanor) began trashing the course. I would generalize her comments as follows: “It’s a bunch of facts and I don’t know which ones are important.” This student received a grade of A (second highest in the course) in Frontiers, was the “engine” in her lab group, and matured tremendously over the course of the semester as evidenced by her Feedback comments. The responses of both students are instructive. In the first case, I would like to pose the question: “Could we be doing more interesting things in our first-year lab courses to attract good biology majors to chemistry?” The second case troubles me more, because the student was an elementary education major. I would like to pose this question: “Should we wonder why so many elementary education teachers have science phobia?” (22). Perhaps a course like Frontiers would be ideal for education majors. In fact, steps in that direction are being taken at Bloomsburg University. Some have argued that the character of many science experiences “turns off ” certain students who could otherwise master science (8–10). Numerous provocative opinions, innovative approaches, and curricular suggestions, and descriptions of courses that address this issue have appeared in this Journal (1, 20, 23–25). I would advocate the use of up-todate resources and experiences. A very common remark in Feedback sections and in the post-course evaluation is exemplified by this comment: “I was amazed that I could work with all this high tech stuff.” In fact there is no reason why “advanced instrumentation” and “complex techniques” cannot be used by first- and second-year non–science majors (26 ). If nothing else, this level of commitment sends the following messages to these students: (i) we have confidence that you can use this stuff (i.e., you are not hopelessly inept); and (ii) your education in science is important to us (i.e., you are more than body count). There are various views on the role of the lab and its value in relationship to lecture (21, 27 ). For a non-sciencemajors course, if hours are at a premium, I argue strongly for trading a 3-hour, 3-credit, well-designed lab experience even-up for a 3-hour, 3-credit lecture course. Would there be less content? Most would say yes. But for me this very much depends on whether you view content qualitatively or

1006

quantitatively, and I’d vote for quality. After all, don’t we want all students, no matter what their major, to experience science rather to watch a distillate of the results of science from the 20th row of a lecture auditorium? Acknowledgments I gratefully acknowledge the National Science Foundation for a grant (ILI-DUE 9651177) that enabled the development of Frontiers in Science and Technology. I also thank Bloomsburg University for a reassigned time award to develop this course. I thank the Honors Program at Bloomsburg University for approval of Frontiers for the Honors Program. Lastly, and most importantly, I thank the students of Frontiers for teaching me a lot about learning. Literature Cited 1. Schwartz, A. T.; Bunce, D. M.; Silberman, R. G.; Stanitski, C. L.; Stratton, W. J.; Zipp, A. P. J. Chem. Educ. 1994, 71, 1041–1044. 2. Klotz, I. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1992, 69, 225–228. 3. Jansen, S. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 1411–1412. 4. Roberts, J. L.; Selco, J. I.; Wacks, D. B. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 779–781. 5. Anderson, J. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1994, 714, 1044–1046. 6. Angel, S. A.; LaLonde, D. E. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 1437– 1441. 7. Finholt, A. E.; Miessler, G. L. J. Chem. Educ. 1986, 63, 331–333. 8. Tobias, S. Revitalizing Undergraduate Science, Why Some Things Work and Most Don’t; Research Corporation: Tucson, AZ, 1992. 9. Pushkin, D. B. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 809–810. 10. Huebert, B. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1985, 62, 129–130. 11. Schultz, E. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 447–449. 12. Winfrey, R. W.; Rott, M. A.; Wortman, A. T. Unraveling DNA, Molecular Biology for the Laboratory; Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997. 13. Parson, K. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1988, 65, 325–326. 14. Hazen, R. M.; Trefil, J. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, 392–394. 15. Glickstein, N. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 353–355. 16. Schultz, E. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 505–507. 17. Alcamo, I. E. DNA Technology, The Awesome Skill; Wm C. Brown: Dubuque, IA, 1996. 18. Swinehart, J. H. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, 195–196. 19. Moore, J. W. J. Chem. Educ. 1989, 66, 15–19. 20. Ricci, R. W.; Ditzler, M. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, 228–231. 21. Hilosky, A.; Sutman, F.; Schmuckler, J. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 100–104. 22. National Science Board. Preparing Our Children: Math and Science Education in the National Interest; NSB: Arlington, VA, Feb 19, 1999; p 18. 23. Hawkes, S. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1992, 69, 178–181. 24. Barrow, G. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1994, 71, 874–878. 25. Apple, T.; Cutler, A. J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 462–463. 26. Steehler, J. K. J. Chem. Educ. 1998, 75, 274–275. 27. Cawley, J. J. J. Chem. Educ. 1992, 69, 642.


A Chemistry Course with a Laboratory for Non-Science Majors

Recommend Documents