NSF Award
0088056
Chemistry (12) <br/>In response to the national discussion on science pedagogy and a school-wide upgrade of computing facilities and networking, we have been carrying out a major redesign of our chemistry curriculum. In lower division courses, the impact of these changes has been most apparent in the so-called "lecture" portion of traditional lecture/laboratory sequences. This project facilitates a complementary development of laboratory-based segments of the first-year principles of chemistry course and the second-year organic chemistry course. We are extending to the laboratory the emphasis on discovery-based and collaborative learning that characterizes our classrooms. We are making lower-division laboratory experiences closer approximations of the real thing and are using the excitement of discovery as the driving force for learning just as it is in the general scientific enterprise. The project adapts in a general way the Project Kaleidoscope Plan for Strengthening Undergraduate Science and Mathematics, and, more specifically, modifies experiments currently used in undergraduate chemistry courses to a discovery format, and incorporates computing in pedagogy following the model of the SCALE-UP Project at North Carolina State University in physics. <br/><br/>Incorporation of a set of instrumentation is enabling us to achieve these objectives through the introduction of modern technology that both broadens the scope of what students can do and, as important, frees up time and helps establish a collaboratory capability for thinking about and understanding what is being done. Major items being introduced into the courses include laptop computers with wireless networking capability and expanded molecular modeling support, Vernier instrument kits for data acquisition, fiber-optic diode-array ultraviolet/visible spectrophotometers, and an upgrade of our current nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. We are providing a laboratory environment that allows students to assume direct responsibility in a reasonably efficient way for the broadest range of laboratory work, with the instructor's time as a skilled technician minimized in order to emphasize his or her role as guide and mentor. We anticipate that implementation of this technology will begin to blur the distinction between the lecture and laboratory segments of these courses. <br/><br/>Finally, as a women's college, we have played a significant role in increasing the proportion of women entering the science professions. One goal of this project is to increase the number of our students who continue in the sciences beyond their first two years and, also, the proportion of women who elect to pursue post-graduate study in the discipline because their early experience of science at the college level has engaged both their minds and their interest.
