January 2, 2010 – 3:52 pm
Once the ground rules have been laid out in the syllabus, it is up to the instructor to enforce them. Being “the enforcer” is often a struggle for me. I have had enough experience in class management to know that running a “tight ship” pays off well for almost everybody (students and faculty) in the [...]
December 28, 2009 – 8:31 pm
Class management is the “teaching” side of science teaching that I often struggle with. I enjoy the science and I enjoy contact with students. If I didn’t like those, I wouldn’t have much of an excuse to do what I do. On the other hand, class management is something that I do reluctantly and without [...]
December 14, 2009 – 6:13 am
I have developed an analogy that describes some of my feeling about assigning grades. When I was of dating age, I used to hear a lot about the different expectations of men and women in a dating relationship. Men desire physical intimacy, usually described as “sex.” Women desire emotional intimacy, usually described as “love.” The [...]
December 1, 2009 – 8:36 pm
We currently have a system where first semester organic chemistry lecture and laboratory is counted as one 5 credit course. The lab is considered to account for one of those five credits. As a result, the lab grade is worth 20% of the course grade. In many schools, organic chemistry lecture is a separate course [...]
November 21, 2009 – 11:58 am
“The customer is always right.” This must be a quote from a multi-billionaire retailer like Marshall Field. Not exactly words to live by for a college laboratory instructor, but something to contemplate. In college courses students ultimately play the role of consumer/customer. I am always amazed that college students, experienced education consumers for over a [...]
November 2, 2009 – 7:57 pm
The main reason we do concurrent laboratory sessions with our science courses is to reinforce the (largely theoretical) material presented in the lecture with hands-on observation-based laboratory experience. Truly, it is a delight to talk with authority about a reaction that I, myself have actually performed in lab. It is even more wonderful to talk [...]
October 18, 2009 – 6:30 pm
The 2009 meeting of the Midwest Association for Chemistry Teachers at Liberal Arts Colleges (MACTLAC) was held at Hope College. The theme this year was “Integration of Research into Teaching: Improving Learning Through Research.” Plenary sessions were led by Lorna Jarvis (Hope), Nancy Kerner (U of MI), and Don Wink (UIC). Of most interest to [...]
October 7, 2009 – 5:19 am
Grading lab reports this week I was disconcerted that so many of the students had problems with the calculations required of the lab (EDTA Titration of Zinc Chloride). The lab manual gave a detailed example of the calculations and the prelab was almost entirely composed of step-by-step calculations that were completely analogous to those required [...]
September 21, 2009 – 7:07 pm
One questions most asked by students about Organic Chemistry lab is, “Will this take long?” Truthfully, I am always tempted to reply, “What does your schedule say?” I suspect that students ask this because they know that a science lab might be significantly shorter than the scheduled time. I take it as a personal challenge [...]
September 6, 2009 – 4:59 pm
“The Organic Chem Lab Survival Manual, A Student’s Guide to Techniques” by James W. Zubrick is now in its 7th edition (2007). Zubrick authors a 368 page paper back that covers most all of the basic laboratory techniques students learn in Sophomore Organic Chemistry. I have used it as a supplemental text in Organic Chemistry [...]
