The strategy
The web fits very well when chemistry is taught in a real-world context with an issues-based format. And, it helps my students to acquire skills that I think will be important for them personally, as voters, and as global citizens:
- Locate information on the web related to local, national, and global scientific issues that affect them;
- Explain in writing what they have found;
- Argue, using scientific data, for or against a particular issue; and,
- Take a stand on an issue using scientific data as evidence.
In addition to developing these "scientific literacy" skills, the students learn chemistry along the way - but on a "need to know" basis. Chemistry is embedded throughout these topics and an understanding of the related chemistry concepts is essential to arguing one's point. About a third of the exercises are controversy-based and require students to argue a point using chemistry. For example, these exercises ask:
- When does it make sense to drink bottled water?
- Should we support and ratify the Kyoto treaty?
- Is it OK to eat foods containing olestra?
- Are tanning beds harmful?
- How can we as a nation deal with nuclear waste?
An example exercise on bottled water is:
"Select two websites that deal with bottled water: one by a supplier and the other a consumer information site. The former may flood you with statistics about the benefits of bottled water, the latter may raise questions such as, Is bottled water safer or is it worth the cost? For each site list the title, author, URL [web address] and two things from the site that you learned about water. Get the two opposing viewpoints and let's start talking."
This exercise motivates a discussion on water as a chemical. What is water? How pure is it? What do you expect to find in it? How does it behave? What are the issues of drinking water on this planet? So, this covers (to name a few topics): solvents, concentrations, molecular structures and the physical properties of water and hydrogen bonding.
Many of these topics came directly out of a book that I co-authored, Chemistry in Context: Applying Chemistry to Society, a project of the American Chemical Society (ACS). The ACS has a short description of Chemistry in Context, and there is a Chemistry in Context web site with web-based real world exercises (see for example, Chapter 2 - Protecting the Ozone Layer, web resources) that go along with the book.
This contextual approach to chemistry sometimes is criticized as "watered-down" chemistry. But anybody who teaches a course like this quickly learns how complex and quickly changing real-world chemistry topics actually are. Although we don't teach using a "standard" chemistry curriculum (first atoms and molecules, then moles, bonding, gas laws, etc), we still cover most of the same topics - the order is just very different because we cover topics on a need-to-know basis to understand the issue at hand. In fact, the concepts we cover are actually more difficult because of the real-world emphasis: the chemistry of air, water, the environment, and the stratospheric ozone is extremely complex.
Teaching chemistry in this way definitely requires more work on my part. I first had to learn the chemistry of topics like nuclear waste and photochemical smog because these certainly weren't covered in my own Ph.D. training. And, each semester I have to research the new developments. For example, once I have put together information about stratospheric ozone, I can't just sit there and teach it the same way year after year.
The course
I use the web in my general chemistry course (called Chemistry 108
Spring, 2002
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) for liberal arts students who are not pursuing a science major. It has 250 students in the fall, and 120 in the spring (when it is a writing intensive course that satisfies the University's general education writing requirement). I have the help 5 or 6 TAs for the course, almost all of whom request to teach with me in the course.
Cathy Middlecamp