Sheila's Safety Net
Collection of Safety LOs from VIPEr
Developing effective student learning groups
Description
Asking students to work in groups and developing group projects is always challenging. This 5-slides about describes approaches for increasing the effectiveness and success of student groups. It also contains some helpful links to resources on how to form groups and help students develop group skills.
What Can Go Wrong: A Research Lab Safety Activity
Description
Late in their junior year and into the first two months of their senior year, chemistry majors at Willamette write and submit a research proposal. Shortly before entering the lab for their thesis work, I lead this activity that takes place in our Senior Projects seminar class. The class meets one hour per week and we cover topics such as how to write an effective grant proposal, ethics in science, presenting data, etc., as well as this safety activity.
The Chemistry of Cooley's Anemia: A Case Study
Description
In this case study, information is presented to students in the form of a dialog between a physician and two parents who have just learned that their child has thalassemia (Cooley’s Anemia). The treatment for this disorder requires a lifetime commitment to whole blood transfusion and chelation therapy (both administered on a daily to weekly basis); the biggest obstacle to long term survival is patient non-compliance.
C&E News as a Starting Point for Bioinorganic Literature Discussions
Description
This learning object consists of a bibliography of materials concerning bioinorganic chemistry which have appeared in C&E News over approximately the past 15 years (1999-2014). Many come from the Science and Technology Concentrates, some from News of the Week, others are full articles, and a few are letters to the editor. They cover a wide variety of bioinorganic topics. Also included are citations for the articles from the primary literature paper referred to in the respective C&E News articles.
Thinking scientifically about graphing: a classroom exercise for general chemistry
Description
This excercise explains the basics of drawing graphs for an introductory chemistry class. It give examples of common pitfalls and how to avoid them. Students are guided through graphing a data set, adjusting axes, adding trend lines, modifying legends and adding appropriate labels. The excercise also provides several examples of graphs and asks students to critically evaluate them.
Student choice literature-based take home exam question
Description
During my junior/senior level inorganic course, we did several guided literature discussions over the course of the semester where the students read papers and answered a series of questions based on them (some from this site!). As part of my take home final exam, I gave the students an open choice literature analysis question where they had the chance to integrate topics from the semester into their interpretation of a recent paper of their own choice from Inorganic Chemistry, this time with limited guidance.
Cmap: Concept Mapping Tool
Description
Cmap Tools is a powerful free program that can be used to create concept maps. The program works on any platform.
Thanks to Kurt Birdwhistell for posting the link to this tool to the forum a while back.
Concept mapping the primary literature: "Compositionally Tunable Cu2ZnSn(S1-x,Sex)4 nanocrystals"
Description
Concept maps are a visual way to organize and represent information. In this literature discussion, we introduce a novel technique for teaching literature analysis to students where concept maps are used for establishing relationships between the key ideas, theories, procedures, and methods of a proposed literature article. Using the article “Compositionally Tunable Cu2ZnSn(S1-xSex)4 Nanocrystals: Probing the Effect of Se-Inclusion in Mixed Chalcogenide Thin Films” (Riha, S.C.; Parkinson, B.A.; Prieto, A.L. J. Am. Chem.