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Chapter 5
Engaging Students in the Physical Chemistry Laboratory by Creating a Non-Traditional Research Experience through an Independent Project Andrea N. Giordano,1,* Michael Walzak,2 and Kristina M. Lantzky3 1Department
of Chemistry, St. John Fisher College, 3690 East Avenue, Rochester, New York 14618, United States 2Emeritus, Department of Chemistry, St. John Fisher College, 3690 East Avenue, Rochester, New York 14618, United States 3Provost, Hilbert College, 5200 South Park Avenue, Hamburg, New York 14075, United States *E-mail:
[email protected] Undergraduate research provides a meaningful experience for students to engage in their research project. We wanted to recreate a similar meaningful experience in the physical chemistry lab through the use of an independent project. The independent project requires students to select a laboratory experiment, published in the Journal of Chemical Education, and compete a four-part project that includes a grant proposal, data report, written report, and a presentation. Students at St. John Fisher College complete this independent project in the second semester of physical chemistry laboratory. Initial student survey data on the benefits of this project revealed increases in their sense of independence, enhanced student learning, and preparation for future experiences. Of the students who responded, 95% of them identified one of these areas as a significant benefit from the project.
© 2018 American Chemical Society Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
Introduction Undergraduate research has been demonstrated to be an engaging experience for students and develops their problem solving and critical thinking skills (1–6). In the undergraduate curriculum, an authentic research experience traditionally comes from a summer research experience for undergraduates (REU) or working on a project with a faculty mentor. These experiences enrich a student’s educational experience, but not all students will capitalize on the opportunity to participate in one of these experiences. Creating a nontraditional version of a research experience as part of the curriculum, not only reaches more students, but may encourage students to seek out a more traditional research opportunity in the future. Our goal was to develop a nontraditional research experience through an independent project for physical chemistry students that would: (1) engage students by providing a meaningful experience and (2) expose students to the multiple aspects of research, including seeking project funding. Our first goal was to engage students in the physical chemistry laboratory by providing a meaningful experience for students. This was a difficult task as physical chemistry is a rigorous course that most student perceive as just another barrier they must overcome to receive their bachelor’s degree. To overcome this perception, we wanted to increase student engagement by creating a sense of value for their independent project. Value is a critical component of the learning process, and the more value a student places on an assignment, project, or course, the more motivation the student has and the more learning the student accomplishes (7, 8). One research-based strategy for creating value is to connect the project to a student’s interest (7). For the independent project, we allow students to pick a research topic of interest to them within the realm of physical chemistry. A second research-based strategy for establishing value is to provide students with authentic, real-world tasks (7). By designing the independent project to mimic the steps in the research process, this creates a controlled, but authentic task that provides students with an opportunity to be the principal investigator. Both of these features of the independent project establishes student value and allows for a more meaningful student experience. Our second goal was to expose students to multiple aspects involved in a research project: acquisition of funding, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of results. In traditional undergraduate research experiences, many students are exposed to data acquisition, data analysis and dissemination of results in oral and/or written format. For our independent project, we wanted to keep those same components but also incorporate the grant funding aspect of research. This will expose students to an aspect of the research landscape they might not have been exposed to in a more traditional research experience. There have been other projects in the literature that have incorporated grant writing into their curriculum (9–11) and have seen positive impacts on their students. Common themes among these projects were positive student reviews and increased student engagement in the course. In addition to our two goals, we wanted to incorporate peer review into the project because peer review is such a critical part of the grant funding and the publication processes in chemistry. Peer review has been demonstrated as a high74 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
impact practice in the literature (12–14), and was also utilized in other grant writing projects (9–11). With the two goals of our project coupled with the high-impact practices of undergraduate research and peer review, we hope our independent project will make the physical chemistry laboratory a more meaningful experience for our students.
Independent Project Description Chemistry and biochemistry students at St. John Fisher College are required to take a two-semester physical chemistry lecture and laboratory sequence. Each semester students complete four experiments that result in extensive data and laboratory reports. During the second semester student will complete an independent project. This project requires students to select a laboratory experiment that has been published in the Journal of Chemical Education, that is of interest to them and contains significant physical chemistry content. Examples of selected topics can be found in Table 1 (15–35). The article a student selects will serve as the subject for their four-part independent project that includes a grant proposal, data report, written report and an oral presentation. This project is a spread throughout the semester with multiple peer review and assessment points, as outlined in Table 2. This experiment must be approved by the instructor in which the instructor reviews for appropriate challenge, instrumentation, and ability to fit within the budget.
Table 1. Examples of Journal of Chemical Education articles chosen by students for their independent projects. Student Completed Independent Projects An Inversion Recovery NMR Kinetics Experiment (15) An Undergraduate Laboratory Experiment in Bioinorganic Chemistry: Ligation States of Myoglobin (16) “Open-Box” Approach to Measuring Fluorescence Quenching Using an iPad Screen and Digital SLR Camera (17) Development of a Handmade Conductivity Measurement Device for a Thin-Film Semiconductor and Its Application to Polypyrrole (19) Determination and Comparison of Carbonyl Stretching Frequency of a Ketone in its Ground State and the First Electronic Excited State (28)
75 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
Table 2. Timeline for all the components of the independent project. Project Components
Week of lab
Article selection and approval
Week 1
Peer review of proposal
Week 2
Proposal submitted
Week 3
Experiment completion
Weeks 3 – 9
Data report submitted
Week 10
Peer review of written report
Week 13
Oral presentation
Weeks 13 & 14
Written report submitted
Week 15
The students are asked to write a grant proposal that requests funding from the instructor for them to order specific chemicals or equipment needed to complete the experiment. The proposals consist of three sections: Background and Motivation, Research Plan, and Budget. The Background and Motivation section must identify the problem and develop the context as to why this subject or problem is interesting. It needs to focus on key technical issues that are used to investigate the problem and state explicitly the objectives of the experiment. The Research Plan provides an in-depth plan of action including project timeline. Students must also provide a comprehensive budget including the cost, purity, amount and source of all supplies and equipment to be purchased and any information on the supplies and equipment that are already available in the department. The proposals are subject to a blind student peer review using PeerMark™ through TurnItIn™. Students review the proposal for clarity and thoroughness of scientific explanations. Final proposals are reviewed by the instructors and if accepted the materials the students requested in their budget will be ordered. If the student submits an incomplete budget or an unrealistic budget the proposal is rejected and students can rework the budget or choose another project. Once the materials have been ordered and received the students have six weeks to successfully complete the experiment. If the student cannot successfully replicate the experimental results from the article they must try the experiment three times making significant changes in their methodology each time. After a successful grant proposal and completion of the experiment the students are required to complete a data report. This report includes a written experimental procedure including any experimental modifications required to achieve success, the experimental data collected, the value of each calculated quantity of interest, error calculations for each calculated quantity, the Matlab code for all calculations, and literature values. The next part of the independent project requires students to complete a written report that is a comprehensive review of their project, results and analysis. This report is similar in form to a journal article as it includes an abstract, 76 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
introduction, experimental, results and discussion, conclusions, and reference sections. Students must include a literature review of comparable experiments in their introduction section of their report. The final part of this project is a 15-minute oral presentation given to their peers and instructors. The oral presentation services as an introduction to the criteria and rubric, Table 3, used for the senior capstone experience that all chemistry and biochemistry students must complete to graduate. Students were provided with their scored rubric and instructor feedback on their oral presentation at the end of the semester. This feedback was used to help students identify areas of weakenss in their oral presentation and determine how to strengthen these areas for their senior capstone presentation.
Table 3. Criteria for assessment of the oral presentation component of the independent project (36). Content: Importance of topic, relevance, accuracy of facts, overall treatment of topic Organization/Clarity: Appropriate introduction, body, and conclusions; logical ordering of ideas; transitions between major points Scientific Interpretations – Background: Appropriate interpretations of supporting scientific study Scientific Interpretations – Data: Appropriate interpretations of data presented Completeness: Level of detail, depth, appropriate length, adequate background of information Grammar/Mechanics: Correct grammar and usage that is appropriate for audience(s) Documentation: Proper support and sourcing for major ideas, inclusion of visual aids that support message Delivery: Adequate volume, appropriate pace, diction, personal appearance, enthusiasm/energy, posture, effective use of visual aids Interactions: Adequate eye contact with audience, ability to listen and/or answer questions
Student Perceptions Preliminary student perception data was collected through course evaluations at the end of the semester. Students were given lab time to complete the course evaluation to ensure a high response rate (88%, N = 22). The course evaluation contained one open-ended question about the independent project, “What are your feelings about the independent project and why?” The broadness of this question was intended to give students the opportunity to express any and all perceptions they had as a result of completing this project. On the other hand, the broadness of this question does not allow for any concrete conclusions to be drawn about the efficacy of this project. Instead, the intention of this preliminary assessment was to determine: (1) Did the students perceive any benefits from completing the 77 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
project? and (2) What were the parts of the project that could be improved from a student perspective? The preliminary course evaluation data was analyzed by pattern-coding the student responses, clustering the data into categories, and organizing the categories into themes (37, 38). From this analysis, two themes emerged that were centered around the student perceived benefits of the project and ways to improve the project for the future (Table 4). There were three categories that fell under the benefits theme: (1) sense of independence, (2) enhanced student learning, and (3) preparation for future experiences. Under this theme, 95% of student responses were coded to one of the benefit categories, meaning that 21 out of 22 students felt the project benefitted them in some capacity. The sense of independence was the most commonly perceived benefit with 45% of students, followed by 32% of students felt the project enhanced their learning, and 18% of students felt the project prepared them for future experiences. While all of these perceived benefits happened naturally from the project itself, future iterations of the project will include modifications that intentionally incorporate student learning outcomes that focus on research and soft skills that students need to be successful in their career.
Table 4. Summary of student perception data acquired from course evaluations. The response rate was 88% with N = 22. Patten-coded student feedback from course evaluations
% of student responses coded to a category or theme 95%
Student perceived benefits Benefit categories Sense of independence
45%
Enhanced student learning
32%
Preparation for future experiences
18% 68%
Student perceived improvements Improvement categories Improve project structure
41%
Increase project time
27%
For the project improvement theme, 68% of student responses were coded to this theme. Under the improvement theme, there were two categories: (1) improvement to project structure and (2) increase project time. Improvement to project structure was mentioned in 41% of student responses and increased project time was mentioned in 27% of student responses. For project structure, student suggests included establishing better communication with instructors, improving the process for choosing their projects, and providing more guidance throughout the project. For project time, students suggested giving more time for completion 78 Teague and Gardner; Engaging Students in Physical Chemistry ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2018.
of the project, ordering chemicals earlier in the semester or over winter break, and picking their project the fall semester. This improvement feedback was incorporated in designing the next iteration of the project that included extending the project from one semester to two semesters. This increase in project time provides many opportunities to make the suggested improvements to the project structure, including more guidance throughout the project and improving the logistics of the project.
Future Directions The independent project was overall a successful project with 95% of students perceiving they received some type of benefit from completing this project. While this is very positive feedback from the students, 68% of students felt the project could be improved. The next iteration of this project will address the students’ suggestions of increasing the project time and improving the project structure. The project will be extended from one semester to two semesters. This length extension of the project will allow students more time to complete the project, but also provides an opportunity to increase the amount of guidance from instructors throughout the project and improve the logistics of the project. Additionally, we would like to improve the project by incorporating student learning outcomes into the project that focus on developing students’ research and soft skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving, and oral and written communication. By developing and incorporating student learning outcomes into the independent project, we will be able to complete targeted assessments to address the efficacy of the project on developing students’ research and soft skills. These skills are not only important for preparing chemistry students going into the chemical industry or graduate school, but are invaluable for students going into any career or professional school.
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