Bookend Activities to Highlight Chemistry as the Central Science

General chemistry can be a daunting course for students and may be seen as a gatekeeping course or a general education “hoop to jump through” toward a goal of a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) degree for non-majors. Challenges are exacerbated by the large enrollment format common in many higher education institutions. Many approaches have been taken toward enhancing the educational experience within such courses. For example, there is good evidence that active learning strategies are useful in increasing student performance in STEM courses.¹ Students’ sense of belonging has also been identified as a key indicator for persistence and success in chemistry.^2–5 Some specific innovative activities aimed at improving chemistry courses have integrated art/creativity and/or writing,^6–11 or have highlighted real-world applications, case studies, and examples of chemistry in context.^12–16 The activities discussed here build on some of these preceding initiatives.

While establishing and maintaining student interest can be a challenge, where there is a challenge, there is also opportunity. General chemistry courses, which are required for most, if not all, STEM degrees, serve as an oft-overlooked avenue for increasing public awareness of the role of chemistry in society and other STEM fields. An interesting chapter has been published on the complicated nature of effectively communicating chemistry concepts and their importance in society.¹⁷ Given concerns about so-called “chemophobia” and negative or neutral public/student perceptions of chemistry/chemicals,^18–20 general chemistry is an excellent opportunity to encourage students to explore the nexus of chemistry and their interests, experiences, majors, and career aspirations.

Here, a set of “bookend” activities are described, aimed at improving student buy-in for the course, as well as their understanding of the course material and its relevance to interests such as career aspirations and hobbies. The first activity aims to encourage students to explore the breadth of chemistry and chemists/careers in chemistry to find links between the field and their own interests. This assignment is completed during the first week of class and helps set the tone for what they will be studying. The second activity in this set is due at the end of the semester before the final exam. It provides a wrap-up of the course material, tasking students to read a news article related to chemistry and their personal interests and to tie it back to the specific course material (thus doubling as a study opportunity for the cumulative final exam). This structure highlights the relevance of chemistry to student interests—in student-driven activities—at both the outset and culmination of the course.

Context

Variations of these two assignments have been implemented in two consecutive years thus far. Each time, they were in a large enrollment (~100-200 students) lecture hall-style section of General Chemistry I, where nearly all students are non-chemistry STEM majors at a public research-intensive institution in the United States. The assignment is given as homework and/or extra credit outside of class and administered via the learning management system (LMS). These assignments were only one of several components contributing to the overall course grade.

Beginning of Semester Activity: Exploring the ACS Website for Subfields, Careers, and Chemists

A version of the beginning of the semester assignment has been assigned for two years in a row, with the goal of (1) helping students see the ubiquity of chemistry (i.e., that it is the central science) and (2) having students explore the overlap between their own interests (career, major, hobbies) with areas of chemistry. Table 1 provides an overview of the two iterations of the assignment, including prompts and links for students to use to address the prompts. For both iterations, the common theme was tasking students with exploring the website of the American Chemical Society (ACS) to learn about and align specific fields of chemistry and areas of specialization within chemistry with their interests. By showing both iterations, I hope to show the flexibility of the assignment.

During the first iteration (Fall 2023), students were additionally tasked with “picturing themselves as chemists,” being asked to create and submit a creative product (drawing, poem, or short story) where they integrated what they learned from the websites with their interests to envision themselves as a chemist. The motivation for this was to integrate the assignment with other creative assignments offered in the course that year and to foster a sense of belonging and chemistry identity within the student body.

The second, most recent iteration was during the Fall 2024 semester. The general ethos of the assignment was maintained, but the creative component was dropped and replaced by two new components: first, students were tasked with reading and answering questions and reflections related to a personal narrative journal article titled “Chemists Invent Drugs and Drugs Save Lives,” and students were asked to explore a section of the ACS website highlighting various chemists and their careers. The goals of the first prompt were to give students common ground, in addition to the more open-ended portion of the work, and to have them read through a personal narrative where someone else (the author physician-chemist) experienced their own epiphany with respect to the role of chemistry in society (here medicine)—further, this exposed students to academic literature at an early stage. The goal of the second new prompt was similar to that of the previous “belonging” portion of the assignment, but instead allowed students to explore the diversity—both in terms of background and in terms of career paths and foci—of chemists and, in some cases, see their own identities and interests reflected therein.

Table 1 provides the specific prompt topics and/or tasks students were asked to address in both iterations and includes the relevant links to the web resources used by students for this assignment. By keeping links within the ACS ecosystem, source reliability is not an issue that must be evaluated by the instructor during grading, and off-topic discussions are minimized while still allowing students the freedom to select specific topics of their interest and explore beyond the confines of the typical general chemistry textbook.

Table 1. Overview of activity as implemented in Fall 2023 and Fall 2024

End of Semester Activity: Selecting a C&EN Article Linking Interests with Class Content

The end-of-semester activity serves to again encourage students to explore the intersection of their interests with chemistry. This activity also serves as a review opportunity to demonstrate understanding of the topics covered in class. This allows for a higher-order understanding of the terms and concepts beyond memorization or application to only pre-selected examples. This activity has been assigned as a small extra credit assignment rather than a required assignment so far and thus allows students to “opt-in,” furthering the student-directed nature of the activity. However, it could also readily be implemented as a required assignment.

Students are directed to the Chemical & Engineering News website (https://cen.acs.org/, last accessed 10 December 2024) to select an article of interest to them. As with the beginning of semester activity, limiting article selection to this one source ensures that the content will be closely related to chemistry such that they can complete the assignment and that the article selected is from a reliable source.

Figure 1 provides an overview of the steps of this assignment, which were implemented as a “quiz” in the course’s LMS.  First, students are directed to the C&EN website and tasked with finding and reading an article of interest to them. They then briefly summarize the article in a paragraph or a few bullet points. Next, they explain how the article relates to their interests (e.g., hobby, major, career goals). Finally, they are tasked with identifying a specific number (~three) of class concepts relevant to their selected article. They then briefly explain the class concept in general and precisely how it relates to the article. By doing this, they are exploring the class content more deeply and making connections to real-world topics relevant to them that may not otherwise be made over the course of the class. The hope is that this also helps develop an appreciation for the relatedness between chemistry and so many other fields.

Figure 1. Steps of the end-of-semester activity. The number of class concepts can vary depending on class needs and goals.

Some Thoughts on Grading Open-Ended Assignments in Large-Enrollment Courses

Accurate and timely grading and feedback within a reasonable instructor workload are among the greatest hindrances to implementing open-ended assignments in large enrollment courses. While such assignments will always be more time-consuming to grade than auto-graded LMS-based or multiple-choice assignments, some ideas that have helped include:

• Limit options without limiting student input. For example, this might look like limiting the sources to specific ACS websites (as described here) or limiting to specific class content topics (e.g., if similar assignments were used for specific chapters or modules). This reduces grading time spent vetting sources or evaluating alignment of the target topic(s) on the fly.
• Clear expectations. Making expectations very clear and formatting the assignment to quickly evaluate whether the expectations have or have not been met can help streamline grading. This might look like using the “quiz” function in an LMS to break the assignment down into specific components, or it could look like a formatted multipart worksheet/template.
• Auto-grade objective questions. Multiple choice and/or LMS auto-graded options can be used to grade any questions with objective answers. For instance, reading check questions for an assigned article can be objectively graded. This saves time for instructor grading to focus on the more subjective questions.
• Common comments for common errors. Having stock feedback comments to select for common omissions or errors can allow for more rapid feedback without limiting the utility of the feedback.
• Use personalized comments to build rapport. The reflective nature of these assignments provides an excellent opportunity to provide individualized feedback to students who make interesting connections, find noteworthy articles or examples, or describe unique, relevant interests or experiences. This allows the assignments to contribute toward rapport and community building, in addition to learning about chemistry as the Central Science.

Reflection and Conclusions

These assignments seem to be well-received by students thus far, and interest and/or surprise were shown at how chemistry tied in with varied outside interests and career goals. Student responses in the first assignment can also provide useful insights into interests upon which the instructor can build additional examples into the remainder of the course, which might improve student engagement and interest over the course of the class. The second implementation of the beginning-of-semester assignment, where students learned about a chosen chemistry professional, provided students an opportunity to explore less-known chemistry career paths (such as in brewing or patent law) and less common educational paths (such as having attended 2-year colleges), which students seemed to appreciate. The diversity of articles selected for the second assignment is always interesting—there is a link between chemistry and just about anything, and C&EN is likely to have covered it! Overall, these assignments seemed to be effective in engaging students in considering the “bigger picture” of the chemistry concepts covered in class. Hopefully, through assignments like these, general chemistry can be not only an opportunity to teach the “nuts and bolts” of chemistry-based content and problem-solving but also to provide insights into and appreciation for chemistry within the broader context of society and other sciences.

Depending on course structure and size, there are several modifications of the assignments that could be interesting. For instance, while these activities were described as “bookends” here, the news article assignment could also work nicely as a review, application, and reflection opportunity on the material of each course chapter or unit rather than only at the conclusion of the course. If the course size and structure allow, peer review activities, learning about and evaluating the selection of reliable scientific news sources, and presenting findings and reflections to peers are all possible modifications that could further expand the assignments.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

The many students who have taken General Chemistry I with me and who inspired and—in some cases, participated in—these activities are thanked. Efforts in integrating writing in chemistry classes have been financially supported by a Cottrell Scholars Award (#28166) from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. Efforts to increase student engagement in General Chemistry through innovative assignments have been partially sponsored by the Mississippi State University College of Arts & Sciences through an Inclusive Excellence in Teaching Grant. Attendance at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education (BCCE 2024), where several useful discussions occurred and insights were gained, was financially sponsored by a Mississippi State University College of Arts & Sciences Professional Development in Teaching Grant.