Patricia H. Suter
Del Mar College Corpus Christi, Texas 78404
Making Chemistry Relevant
During the past four years an experiment has been conducted with some General Inorganic Chemistry students a t Del Mar College, a community junior college. "Relevant" is the "in" word these days and students are often quite vocal in their demands for subject matter pertinent to what they think they want or need to study. Since General Inorganic Chemistry is a required course for all science majors, most students are not tending toward a career in chemistry and traditional topics often seem to them a waste of time. They do not know the connection between Raoult's law and antifreeze. In an attempt to make such connections apparent to the students, and their study more palatable, weekly discussion sessions on a variety of topics have been held. Various formats were tried in the choice of topics for discussion, such as arbitrary assignment of the topics by the instructor, hut the one being used presently has had very favorable evaluation by the students. The classes, consisting of 25-30 students, are divided by lot during the second week of a semester into groups containing four or five students. Each group then chooses a general topic from the list supplied by the instructor or by consensus of the group members. See Table 1 for the latest list of suggested topics. If the group chooses its own topic from outside the list, the only restriction is that the topic chosen must illustrate chemical principles or applications. The group also picks a date for its presentation with the first presentation scheduled for the fifth week of the semester. Usually the p u p divides the general topic into segments with each member taking one segment to present to the class. Students are asked to prepare their material for presentation using not more than 10 min per segment. When uwsihle related mazazine articles are assigned to the cla& as a whole, 1wkin advance. The class is expected to ask questions of the panel or discuss facts or issues following the of the material. For most topics, this general discussion period lasts no longer than about 20 min so that the weekly event consumes about an hour. At the conclusion of each panel presentation and the discussion period, all students are handed an evaluation sheet. See Tahle 2. Student responses are compiled and the overall rating for each group is posted. No grades are given on the presentations. The class rankings have varied from a high of 8.7 for the discussion panel on Food Additives in the fall of 1972 to a low of 5.8 for the panel on Water Treatment in the spring of 1972. Following the last weekly presentation of the semester, the students are given another evaluation sheet covering the whole semester's work (see Tahle 3). The students have evaluated the discussions in very favorable light with 92-96% answering yes to items 1, 2, and 5. Forty-five percent felt the presentations should not be graded, hut if they were, 55% said the grading should he done by the instructor and not the students. They evidently felt that Presented at the 27th Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society at San Antonio, Texas, December, 1971.
Table 1. Proposed Topics
Paints
Heavy MotalPallution
Urban Problems Chemical EvolutionofLife Cancer-ChsmicalTteafment WarteTreatment
Table 2. Evaluation Sheet lor Lab Discussion GrouDs
YO"?
5) Which p m n f a t i o n made the greatest favorable impression on you? Why? 61 What is your ovcrallrankingfm this panel? Titleof CrnW ResDntation
PsrtieipantaonPanel
Table 3. Evaluation Sheet-Lab
Discussions
5) Do you feel that the proparationof your repart waaa valuable
In%truewr
cr.erimcelo~o"? Yes 6 ) Recommended changes 1) Which p-ntationar topic madethewatest i m p m i a n o n you and why?
No
other students judged more harshly than the instructor. Recommended changes. item 6 in Tahle 3. included the use of more outside speakers. One panel o n ~ i Pollution r tried this during the spring semester of 1973 with excellent results. Students from other classes were invited to participate that day and some 40 did so resulting in a standing room crowd. A very heated discussion with the public official who was speaking followed. The students ranked his presentation rather low (7.7) hut thought the idea of a public official speaking to them was "great." Other recommended changes called for more visual aids, preparation of an outline of the topic by the panel to hand out to the class in advance of the presentation, and the suggestion that the students not read their reports. To date some 496 students have participated in the program. One topic, Food Additives, has been chosen consistently by a group from each class. The presentation and subsequent discussion on this topic has always generated the most participation by the students and received the highest evaluations. The second most frequently chosen topic has been the one on Mind-Expanding Drugs. The students seem to feel that these topics, if not more relevant to the study of chemistry, are at least of more interest to them.
Volume 51, Number
1, January 1974
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45
