Submitted by Dave / Saint Michael's College on Mon, 06/29/2015 - 14:23
My Notes
Categories
Description

This assignment introduces students to the various sub-disciplines of Inorganic chemistry and requires them to examine the current literature throughout the semester.  The assignment is introduced the first day of class as part of a discussion on the breadth of inorganic chemistry. I review the journals published by the American Chemical Society and discuss which contain papers related to inorganic chemistry.  Students are required to sign up for (ACS alerts) for at least five journals related to inorganic chemistry.   I hand out an instruction page with journals I require them to follow as well as a list of optional journals to follow.  ACS alerts can be found here:  http://pubs.acs.org/page/follow.html.

Every other week I require them to fill out and hand in a short form showing that they have reviewed the article.  (see files) and I post a form on Canvas (our LMS) that they can download and fill out every other week.  The article must have been published on the web no more than two weeks ago.  This ensures that the students can not complete the assignments ahead of time and must follow the alerts throughout the semester. 

 

Learning Goals

Students should be able to examine current inorganic literature.
Students should be able to identify the different sub-disciplines of inorganic chemistry
Students should be able to create and share a brief synopsis of inorganic literature.  

Implementation Notes

Every other week I dedicate 5-10 minutes of class to this assignment.  I have three or four students state the inorganic concepts or materials covered and share their brief synopsis of the article.  In the past a few students would review articles that were not published within the last two weeks. This has been resolved by reminding them of the requirements during the class prior to the due date.

Evaluation
Evaluation Methods

 I assign grades of 0, 1, or 2 points and record it as extra credit towards their homework problem set grade.  Over the past two years nearly all have recieved 2pt per submission.  

I use the following criteria:

2pts. All information (name, due date, journal, etc.) completed and accurate.  Inorganic molecules clearly drawn or theory clearly stated.  Brief statement does not contain any chemistry or grammatical errors.

1pt. All information (name, due date, journal, etc.) completed and accurate.  Inorganic molecules included but NOT clearly drawn or theory NOT clearly stated and/or brief statement contains grammatical errors.

0pts. any section not completed or Brief statement contains errors in the chemistry.  

 

 

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