A Literature Program in General Chemistry It iias long been the feeling of the general chemistry staff at Tennessee Wesleyan College that the students taking general chemistry developed no "feel" for the "currentcy" of the subject, despite constant introduction of immediate applications of chemical principles to current problems. In an attempt to remedy this deficiency, an optional outside reading program was developed for a liberal arts class of 29 students. The rules for this program were quite specific. 1) Any article reported upon had to appear in the current scientific literature. Current was defined to be within the
past two months. 2) The student could submit only one report eaeh week of the tenn. 3) The student was given extra credit for each report submitted. If a student submitted a report for eaeh week of the nine weeks remaining in the term, and received maximum credit for eaeh report, this extra credit would have been approximately 5% of the course grade. 4) Initially, reports were written by the students and submitted to the supervising instructor. After a short period of plagiarism, the report style was changed to outline. 5) Each student was required to meet with the supervising staff member and discuss his outline. 6) The level of the article was of peripheral interest. The major thrust of the program was to involve the student in reading articles he could understand. 7) The instructor assigned an amount of extra credit on a subjective basis, based upon the interview and caliber of the article. 8) No journals were recommended to the students and none was excluded. The maximum number of articles reviewed by one student was seven, with a total of 18 students submitting 62 articles for review. The journals chasen by the students ranged from Electronics Illustrated to Chemical Reuiews. The most popular journals were Chemical and Engineering News (20 articles) and Scientific American (13 articles). The subject matter chasen ranged from reactions of hydrogen atoms in non-aqueous solvents to an analysis of Lake Michigan and covered virtually all topics in between. At the conclusion of the program, the students who had submitted outlines were asked to briefly summarize the articles they had read. They responded to this unannounced examination by giving adequate summaries of all hut 2 of the 62 articles read and reported on during the term. The students were also asked to evaluate the program and enumerate strong and weak points. Other than the obvious benefit of extra credit, virtually every student indicated reading several articles before selection of a report topic. Several students cited the conferences with the supervisor as one of the major benefits of the program. Others suggested making the conferences optional with reduced extra credit. The only modification suggested by the students was ta alluw articles which were less current to be ured. The propram required a conridcrable expenditure of rime hy the supervisor, but tho overall results, in terms of increased student interest in chemistry, seem to indicate that the program is definitely wonhwhil~.
TennesseeWesleysn College Athens, 37303
B. L. Duncan
Volume 50, Number 11, November 1973
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735
