In the Classroom: Writing
Using “Household Chemistry Projects” To Develop Research Skills and To Teach Scientific Writing Michael H. Schmidt Department of Chemistry, California State University, San Marcos, San Marcos, CA 92096-0001 I describe below a project implemented in Chemistry 300, a junior-level library resources and scientific writing course at California State University, San Marcos. This project was originally designed to teach scientific writing, but it also proved to be useful in teaching general research skills. Chemistry 300, The Literature of Chemistry, is a twocredit course, meeting once a week, which was designed to teach both scientific information retrieval (1) and scientific writing. In designing the scientific writing component, I was concerned that the particular challenges of scientific writing were missing if there was no original research about which to write. Others voicing the same concern have addressed it by incorporating varied writing assignments in an upper-division laboratory (2). At California State University, San Marcos, we chose a different approach, keeping the scientific writing in a separate course that focuses on writing. The writing assignments were based on a semester-long independent research project that the students undertook outside of class. I asked the students to design and perform their own research projects using common household chemicals and equipment available at their homes. I have found that the projects not only gave me a chance to teach scientific writing, but also to teach the process of developing research projects from vague ideas about interesting questions to finished manuscripts describing useful results. There has been much written about the value of incorporating elements of research into the teaching laboratories of chemistry and other sciences (3), and research theses are becoming more common for undergraduates. A recognition of the importance of a formal introduction to research (4) has led to a number of introductory courses and programs (5). In most cases, however, the field of research, if not the experimental approach itself, comes from the professor or advisor. In project-based teaching labs, the experimental approach and research area are circumscribed by the course content and apparatus available in the lab. Rarely do the students have the opportunity to find an interesting problem on their own, choose the methods to address the problem, and follow through to results and a written report. The household chemistry projects described below are intended to provide this opportunity. Structure of the Project Because proposal writing is now an important part of life both inside and outside of science, students were asked to prepare a research proposal before beginning work on their household chemistry project. Students were asked in the assignment to explain the importance of the problem as well as the methods to be used in investigating the problem. Several weeks before the proposal assignment I gave students some samples of research questions that could be addressed, so that they would have some idea of the possible size and scope of a successful project. My call for proposals included a request for justification of the project, an experimental plan, budgets, “institutional support” (capital
equipment available at the students’ residences), and “institutional approval” of parents, roommates or other affected parties. I required that a quantitative result be obtained, that the expendables cost be less than $15.00, and that no dangerous procedures or living subjects be employed. Writing of the research papers was spread over several weeks, so that students could concentrate on one section (Introduction, Experimental Section, Results, Discussion, Conclusion and Acknowledgments) at a time. These were graded and handed back to the students for revision and incorporation into the final draft. Class time was used looking at examples in the chemical literature and comparing them with the prescriptions of the class text (6). It was hoped that, with this kind of instruction, the students’ writing style would be closer to that of real research papers rather than the idealized and artificial style that students often develop in introductory lab courses. After corrected drafts of all sections of the paper were returned to the students, a rewritten draft of the whole paper was submitted for peer review. Acting as editor, I distributed the papers to students who were doing research “in the same field”; thus the beer-brewing paper was submitted to the author of the bread-rising paper, since both students were concerned with the growing of yeast. The peer reviews were also graded, so that students had an incentive to do more than a cursory reading of their classmates’ papers. Corrected manuscripts were collected and published by photocopying in The Journal of Household Chemistry, which was distributed to the students at the end of the semester. Copies were saved for distribution to the next Literature of Chemistry class. The final assignment of the semester was an oral presentation of the paper in a class seminar. Pedagogy There were several opportunities to improve students’ writing and research skills throughout the project. One key opportunity was in evaluation of the proposals, in which I not only evaluated the writing, but also the design of the experiments themselves. The proposals, like all other written assignments for this class, could be rewritten for a better grade after the initial evaluation. Through this feedback process, I was able to get students thinking about how to design experiments to get out the most information for the least cost. One student, for example, wanted to try using pudding mix in place of eggs in a cookie recipe. Her original plan was to make two batches: one as a control, one with pudding. I encouraged her to divide up the pudding batch and use various amounts of pudding mix and water in each part, so that a quantitative result (the optimum amount of pudding mix and added water) could be obtained. Introductions are often hard for students to write well in most undergraduate laboratories, because students in these courses must accept the instructor’s judgment on the relevance or methods of the laboratory. In the household chemistry projects, students were writing about a research
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In the Classroom: Writing area of their own choosing. This presented an excellent opportunity to teach them how to write a good introduction, since they had to explain the background and relevance of the problem to an audience that genuinely needed to be convinced of the importance of the problem and the choice of approach used to solve it. In the household chemistry projects, students were also required to cite previous work in the area, which gave them practice in citing literature. Given the nature of the research, citations were sometimes rather unconventional; one student, for example, cited the directions on the bottle of a household cleaner used in her project. Students were also taught how to use ChemDraw, Chem3D, and KaleidaGraph to prepare publication-quality graphs, figures, and tables for reporting their results. Familiarizing students with these resources has helped to improve the quality of lab reports turned in for other upperdivision laboratory courses. As others have previously noted, students often have “a poorly defined understanding of what constitutes a good discussion” (5). At the heart of this problem is the reluctance of students to consider how their results relate to other situations or to existing chemical or physical models. As with the proposals, the return of the original drafts with comments helped steer students towards thinking about the applicability of their data. In one lab report, for instance, I encouraged the student to fit his gasoline-mileage data to a quadratic function for fuel efficiency based on friction and air resistance. Students were also encouraged to consider sources of error in their measurements, and to consider the applicability of their results to other situations. Although it initially caused some bewilderment, I assigned the abstract and title as the last parts of the research report to be completed. I did this because I wanted the project to reflect how most scientists work, first thinking through the data and their interpretation while writing the body of the paper, and then summarizing the paper in the title and abstract. Outcomes I first introduced Household Chemistry Projects into the Literature of Chemistry course in the fall of 1995. In a questionnaire distributed after completion of this course, students commented favorably about the project. A majority of students responding to the questionnaire found the projects to be the most enjoyable part of the course. Several commented that their project was the most useful part of the course. Considering that the project is being compared to learning such useful skills as searching Chemical Abstracts and CA Online, this is quite an endorsement. In the first implementation of this plan, many projects chosen by the students were not strictly “chemistry”, but often incorporated biology or physics (see list below). While I hope to steer more students to more chemical problems in the future, the main point of this assignment is to improve research skills and writing, and physics and biology projects are adequate to accomplish these goals. The quality of the final projects showed marked improvement through the process of writing and rewriting. The final drafts that were published were in some cases very clearly written, with thoughtful interpretations of wellpresented data. The depth of thought of many of the comments submitted in the peer reviews was impressive; this may reflect the fact that students were more inclined to be critical of others’ work than of their own, or that they were learning to be more critical by reading my comments on their own work.
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Some Articles in the First Issue of The Journal of Household Chemistry Determination of solvent soaking time to remove dried ketchup from glass cutting board The amount of yeast needed to make bread rise The effect of vehicle velocity on the rate of fuel consumption Neutralization of picante mild hot sauce with baking soda The effect of using pudding in cookies instead of eggs Investigation of the effect of an air conditioner on a vehicle's consumption of fuel The effect of altitude on the rate of rising of frozen bread dough The electrical properties of galvanic cells constructed from selected produce The effect of varying amounts of corn sugar on the production of alcohol by brewer's yeast
Discussion There are several unique advantages to these household chemistry projects. One is that the students have a chance to think about a single, simple problem for a whole semester, an experience usually reserved for senior research students. This gives them a chance to change research strategies, incorporate the suggestions of others, and understand better the complexities in even the simplest problems or measurements. Another advantage is that the students are not intimidated by the material. They already think of themselves as experts in ketchup stain removal or gas mileage, and they can concentrate on designing experiments and communicating their results rather than struggling with new concepts. With most laboratory classes, it is hard to focus on writing skills when understanding the chemical principles demonstrated in a laboratory presents a challenge to some students. The projects also make an important connection between the science the students study at school and the life they live outside of school. In many cases, friends and family members are brought into the process as lab assistants and data recorders. In our courses for freshmen and nonmajors, we try to incorporate labs that connect curriculum topics with real-life applications, but chemistry majors transferring in from other colleges and universities often have not had this exposure. The household chemistry projects allow these students to make connections and to realize that science can take place outside of the rooms labeled as laboratories. One frequent problem with student writing is that of audience. When students write for instructors, they often leave unwritten what they assume the instructor already knows, and write what they believe the instructor is expecting. With the household chemistry projects, the students correctly perceive the audience, both peers and instructor, as having no preconceived notion of the “correct” purpose, method, or results. For students who are used to outguessing instructors, this is a significant shift from their usual class work. There remains the problem of the students making results conform to their own preconceived ideas of the “correct” answer to an experiment, but this is a problem that occurs in science regularly, and its occurrence in this exercise represents a pedagogical opportunity. This project has only been implemented once, and there are improvements that can be made. For the students, the hardest part of the project was coming up with a research idea. As a extension of the effort to make these projects as close as possible to what scientists do, I plan to incorporate
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In the Classroom: Writing a survey of relevant literature before the writing of proposals in the next implementation (Fall 1996). The literature will consist of books which emphasize the chemistry of everyday life (7) as well as the first issue of The Journal of Household Chemistry. This should make it easier for the students to come up with research ideas and to have relevant citations in their final manuscript. It would also open up the possibility of more integration between the writing portion and the information-retrieval aspects of the course. Conclusion Many of the students enrolled in the Literature of Chemistry course were first-semester transfer students entering our chemistry program as juniors. I hope that this course equipped students to better understand the nature of the scientific publishing process that produces the results presented in many of their other upper-division courses. I also hope that the Household Chemistry Projects will make
students feel confident in taking a more active role in designing experiments and thinking critically about data when they do their senior research projects. Literature Cited 1. Dess, H. M.; Kesselman, M.; Muha, G. M. J. Chem. Educ. 1990, 67, 946–947; Meschel, S. V. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, 562–563; Gorin, G. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, 757–759; Jenkins, J. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1992, 69, 639–641. 2. Olmstead, J., III. J. Chem. Educ. 1984, 61, 798–800. 3. Demczylo, V.; Martinez, J.; Rivero, A.; Scoseria, E.; Sera, J. L. J. Chem. Educ. 1990, 67, 948–949; Amend, J. R.; Furstenau, R. P.; Tucker, K. J. Chem. Educ. 1990, 67, 593–595. 4. Burke, J. D. J. Chem. Educ. 1988, 65, 592–596. 5. Williams, E. T.; Bramwell, F. B. J. Chem. Educ. 1989, 66, 565–567; Kirk, L. L.; Hanne, L. F. J. Chem. Educ. 1991, 68, 839–841; Spector, T. I. J. Chem. Educ. 1993, 70, 146–148. 6. Day, R. A. How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper, 4th ed.; Oryx: Phoenix, 1994. 7. McGee, H. The Curious Cook. North Point: San Francisco, 1990; McGee, H. On Food and Cooking; Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1984.
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