In the Classroom
Incorporating a Substantial Writing Assignment into Organic Chemistry: Library Research, Peer Review, and Assessment Ivan A. Shibley Jr.* and Louis M. Milakofsky Department of Chemistry, Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College, Reading, PA 19610; *
[email protected] Cynthia L. Nicotera University Libraries, Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College, Reading, PA 19610
Too often student scientific writing occurs only in courses taught by the English department (1). The practice of developing scientific ideas by writing about a topic is neglected in many beginning science courses to permit comprehensive coverage of the subject matter, although several interesting articles have been published on ways to incorporate writing into chemistry courses (2–4). This paper describes a writing assignment that is part of the organic chemistry curriculum at Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley College, although the concept of the including a substantial writing assignment within a course applies to any field of chemistry. Purpose The writing assignment in organic chemistry was designed to meet four main goals. The first goal was to move the course curriculum from a teacher-centered approach to a learnercentered approach (5). Students need to take ownership of their learning; they need to realize that learning is something done by them not to them (6). A second goal was to enhance course content by allowing students to discover applications of the subject matter outside of the classroom. Students in organic chemistry seemed to be learning the course material without realizing the applications of organic chemistry. The writing assignment was designed to introduce the students to interesting aspects of organic chemistry not covered in class or in the textbook. A third important goal of the assignment was to meet a perceived need to teach students about writing in a content-specific course. Students have suggested that the writing done in their technical writing course was disconnected from their science courses. The inclusion of a paper in a contentspecific course seemed to provide a means of helping students better connect writing with science. The writing assignment was designed to strengthen both the organic chemistry curriculum and the scientific writing curriculum. Finally, the
students experience what a scientist has to do in professional life to publish manuscripts. They are introduced to several areas of publishing: obtaining articles (and then citing them), writing a manuscript, going through the peer-review process, and rewriting the manuscript. The Writing Assignment The writing assignment described below is used in several organic chemistry courses offered at Penn State BerksLehigh Valley College. Fifteen to 25 students are enrolled in each course. The first is a 3-credit course designed for students who do not need an extensive background in organic chemistry, such as many of the students majoring in agriculture. The text for the one-semester course, Organic Chemistry by Bailey and Bailey (9), includes “Connections” in each chapter that highlight the relationship of organic chemistry to the world outside the laboratory. The second organic course in which a paper is assigned is a two-semester sequence that enrolls chemical engineering, pre-medicine, biochemistry, and biology majors. The text for this course, Organic Chemistry by McMurry (10), contains “Interlude” sections in each chapter that discuss applications of organic chemistry. The Connections and Interlude sections are suggested to students as ways of generating ideas for their paper. The paper is assigned in one semester of the two-semester course and has been assigned in either the first or the second semester without any obvious difference in quality. The assignment entails writing a paper on any aspect of organic chemistry. The students are told that the paper should be as long as necessary to effectively convey their ideas but that 1,500–2,000 words would be an appropriate length. They are instructed to focus on the research aspects of their topic and are explicitly told not to write an encyclopedia entry. They are told to find some interesting focus for the paper.
Sample Paper Titles, Fall 1999 Vioxx and Celebrex: Which Anti-inflammatory Drug Is More Effective in Treating Arthritis? Does Bakelite Increase the Occurrence of Cancer? Folic Acid Improves Neural Tube Growth in the Developing Embryo The Hip Bone's Connected to the Leg Bone: Effects of Oral Dose of S-Adenosyl-L-methionine on Osteoarthritis Alcohol and Serotonin: The Possible Correlation between Low Levels of Serotonin and the Voluntary Intake of Alcohol Combating Pentachlorophenol with Bacteria 19 Million Americans: Depression or Folate Deficiency? Peppers and Pain Relief: Examining a Novel Use for a Pepper's Heat LSD-Induced Inhibition of Serotonin Receptors and Its Effect on Behavior Octane Rating: Is It Worth the Price? Can a Supplement Enhance Muscle Performance: The Effects of Creatine Intake during Resistance Training
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In the Classroom
The paper might center on a topic that is relevant to them in their lives or in a job they once held or on a topic that has always been of interest to them. Students have tended to focus on biologically relevant organic compounds such as capsaicin (from pepper) or folic acid (see the box). The paper is turned in midway through the semester and then given to two other students for peer review. The peer reviews are collected a week later and summarized by the instructor. The final draft for the paper is due near the end of the semester. On the first day of class a description of the project, covering the library research, the peer review process, and the grading criteria, is handed out as part of the syllabus. Twenty minutes are spent on the first day of class discussing the assignment. After the discussion, the students are advised to begin thinking of topics for the paper so that they can take advantage of the research session to be held at the library in a few weeks. During the third or fourth week of the semester a research session is scheduled in the library at a mutually agreeable time outside of normal class time. Students are given an hour of instruction on the use of library databases, primarily the journals of the American Chemical Society and Medline. Following the session, terminals in the library are reserved for student use. The librarian (C.L.N.) informs students that she is always available for consultation throughout the semester. Thus the students have a point of contact, which should make them less hesitant to ask questions when in the library. Additional instructions are disseminated during the semester. (All handouts described below, including the syllabus for the most recent course, are available at http://www.bk.psu.edu/ faculty/shibley/chem38.html). “Hints for Writing a Scientific Paper” (11) is given to the students on the day before their library session. This handout expands on some of the types of questions that the student should be asking about the topic. Handing it out at this time reminds students about the imminent library session and provides another opportunity in class to deal with questions that may have arisen since the beginning of the semester. One of the most useful handouts has been the use of alternate paper titles (11) because it involves students in actively thinking about the paper in class. In this exercise students must generate three alternative titles for their paper in three different forms: Question, Summary of Thesis, and Title with a Colon. The object of the exercise is to encourage students to focus the aims of their paper by developing a focused title. Another handout, “Dealing with Criticism” (12), is distributed on the day the students turn in their first draft for peer review. It is given out before the peer review process rather than after the reviews are handed back in order to focus the students’ comments, and it is designed to help students deal with any negative criticism they may receive about the paper they have written. Students need to know how to handle inappropriate criticism ahead of time so that they can provide more constructive criticism in writing their reviews.
Library Research The library research required to write the paper helps students develop proficiency in utilizing library resources. In completing the assignment, students learn how to locate relevant information and then use critical thinking skills to evaluate what they have found (13). The library session taught
by C.L.N. minimizes confusion when the student confronts the wide variety of sources available. One benefit of the library session may be that the student realizes that reliable information on every topic is not available on the Internet. The library research has never presented a problem for the students, possibly because of close collaboration between instructor and librarian through every step of the project. The successful collaboration in this project mirrors the recently documented successful collaboration between a librarian and a scientific writing instructor (8).
Peer Review The peer review process of the writing assignment provides enormous benefit to both the student who reads the paper and to the student who writes the paper (14). The reader learns information about science from a peer and sees examples of student writing. The writer receives valuable feedback about his or her writing from a peer. Bruffee points out that “conversation with people we regard as our peers—our equals, members of our own community—is almost always the most productive kind of conversation. So students have to converse with their peers about writing both directly and indirectly” (15). Peer review is done as a means of encouraging students to rewrite their papers. In one course the peer review process was done only on the final draft and the students were asked to assign a tentative grade to the paper. Many of the students in that course orally confessed to feeling ill-equipped to assign a grade. A much better approach is the one currently used— conducting the peer review midway through the semester. The students are instructed to read the paper for understanding and to look for areas where clearer explanations or additional data would improve the paper. They are provided with the grading rubric when given the paper assignment, so they know what the grading criteria will be (http://www.bk.psu.edu/ faculty/shibley/paper.PDF ). One approach recently used is to use a peer review guide from this Journal to help direct the reviewer’s comments. The instructor acts as a journal editor who solicits the peer reviews and then distributes the comments to the student authors. Attached to the reviews is the instructor’s summary of the comments and a few suggestions. The summary is put on college letterhead. The peer review process is an edifying addition to the assignment for students. They not only learn more about their own writing but also learn about other scientific topics from their classmates. Because peer review is combined with a carefully constructed assignment in collaboration with a librarian, the writing assignment is a significant component of the learner-centered classroom. Grading Criteria Before opting to include a paper in organic chemistry, we examined the weight that the paper would hold in the course grade and discussed some important philosophical points. A critical concern involved the grades for the course. The paper might provide a means for students to raise their grades by submitting a well-researched, clearly written paper, and the question was whether the higher grade on the paper should compensate for knowledge deficiencies on exams. Another consideration was that students with high grades in a course may
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In the Classroom
have their grade adversely affected by a “B” paper. Both grade inflation and grade deflation due to the paper have occurred. Alteration of a student’s grade because of the paper is deemed acceptable because the assigned paper meets with the several objectives established for the course: applications of organic chemistry, critical thinking, library research, and scientific writing. The paper constitutes 25 to 33% of the grade, depending on the specific grading policies used for the course. The philosophical underpinnings helped establish the concrete aspects of grading policy, which is constructed as a rubric. A rubric is “the written criteria—or guide—by which student performance or a product is judged” (16 ). As the organic curriculum moves toward a learning-centered design, the necessity for increasing the students’ responsibility for learning becomes apparent. Rubrics are a tool to present expectations to the students that will guide their learning. When used appropriately at the beginning of the semester, rubrics focus the learner’s attention on information the instructor considers important (17 ). Not all students, however, are able to translate what is written in the rubric to what it looks like when applied (18). Samples are put on reserve in the library, made available during class time, and posted on the course Web site. These provide the students with tangible examples that reflect the instructor’s expectation of quality. Too often a scientist feels unprepared to grade a student research paper because of a lack of training in the grading of written assignments. The grading of the paper focuses on the higher-order concerns of ideas and content instead of the lower-level concerns of misspelling and grammatical errors (11, 19). The purpose of the paper is for the student to present a logical, interesting treatment of the scientific subject matter. The grade is based on the logical presentation of the information instead of the use of the English language. The paper is graded for ideas, not grammar (20). Assessment: Student Comments and Comparison Courses After each organic chemistry course in which a paper was assigned, a questionnaire was distributed to solicit student feedback. Almost every student in the most recent course was able to list specific examples of how the paper helped him or her to understand chemistry better. One student commented that writing was an “excellent way to incorporate individual interests into the course”. Another said that the writing “gave us a good understanding of how organic chemistry applies to everyday life”. The peer review process is generally the most successful part of the assignment. One student summarized ideas about peer review when responding to the question about whether the paper was helpful in learning organic chemistry: “My paper didn’t [help] but reading my classmates did [help].” This comment suggests that the peer review process was as beneficial as the writing of the paper, perhaps more so, echoing earlier findings about peer review (14). A danger in the peer review process is that the students seem to sense when an instructor is merely collecting the reviews as a formality. A conscious effort was made in each course to emphasize that only peers could provide information about whether the paper was understandable to them. The instructors deliberately referred to the peer comments when making suggestions for 52
improvement. The comments from the most recent course (fall 1999) made clear that the peer review process is a critical component of improving the student papers. The following comment is typical: “The peer review process helped me to see what I had to clarify within my paper to help my peers better understand the topic.” The inclusion of a writing assignment has not changed the course design. The topics covered in each course in which a paper was assigned were identical to the coverage in past courses where papers were not assigned. The same topics can be covered mostly because the writing assignment is completed outside of class time. There were no significant differences in average grades for courses where a paper was assigned and courses where a paper was not assigned. Variability in average occurred from class to class but no trends were evident. Conclusions and Future Considerations One future consideration in the two-semester sequenced organic course is whether to assign papers in both semesters. Thus far the paper has been assigned in one semester or the other. A possibility is to coordinate the assignment of papers in the two courses so that students write a paper in the first organic course and expand it into a grant proposal based on their findings in the second organic course. We are preparing to pilot this approach. Learning to write clear, logical explanations of scientific ideas is a skill that can be developed in content-specific science courses (21). The assignment described in this article can be implemented with a minimal expenditure of class time. It allows students to take ownership of their learning. They learn about an application of the science they study in class; they learn about applications from their classmates; they learn about critical thinking; and they learn about the process of scientific writing. Judging from student comments and from the quality of the papers received, the writing assignment meets or exceeds established goals. A longitudinal study is being planned to qualitatively assess what the students learned from the paper after completing two more years of classes. This may yield some insight into what aspects of the assignment need to be strengthened and which ones need to be revised. Literature Cited 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
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In the Classroom 12. Semotiuk, N. Teach. Professor 1998, 12 (7), 3. 13. Burkett, A. R.; Dunkle, S. B. J. Chem. Educ. 1983, 60, 469–470. 14. Koprowski, J. L. J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 1997, 27, 133–135. 15. Bruffee, K. A. Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge; Johns Hopkins Press: Baltimore, MD, 1993. 16. Schmoker, M. Results: The Key to Continuous School Improvement; Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development: Alexandria, VA, 1996.
17. Liu, K. Sci. Teach. 1995, 62 (7), 49–51. 18. Wiggins, G. Educ. Leader. 1994, 52 (2), 28–37. 19. Elbow, P. In Writing to Learn: Strategies for Assigning and Responding to Writing Across the Disciplines; Sorcinelli, M. D.; Elbow, P., Eds.; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 1997; pp 91–104. 20. Lunsford, R. F. In Writing to Learn: Strategies for Assigning and Responding to Writing Across the Disciplines; Op. cit.; pp 91– 104. 21. Shires, N. P. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, 494–495.
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