Chemtracker Project

This page is a collaborative live document concerning the Excellence Fund for Leaning and Teaching Innovation grant by David Mountford, Laura Patel, João Pedro Malhado and Oscar Ces. This page is to track the evolution of the project, and not likelly to be of use to anyone else.

Most of this coming from on the 17th March, 23rd March 30th March

Latest additions in green.

General ideas

Removal of marks from lab curriculum.

Less chasing of marks, more of a focus on the achievement of specific skills and the ability to demonstrate these skills across a number of contexts.

Tick boxes with student commentary will form the basis of the mark that is allocated for the course. Academic judgement over marks.

Will students want a mark scheme or will we be required to provide additional details on how the ticks will be converted into marks?

Feedback to students after the experiment could be better, how best to do this in a way that is not too onerous on course leaders?

Lab Overview

Each lab course/experiment/question/problem would be broken down into the following constituent parts.

• Consulting literature - Research problem or question.
• Designing experiment.
• Preparing for experiment
  • Including risk assessment.
• Doing the experiment
  • Keeping records.
  • Lab practice
  • Synthesis plug-in
    • SOPs
    • Basic/Advanced
• Processing and Analysing. Inferences.
• Concluding with respect to hypothesis.
• Communicating and defending. Integrating transferable skills, professional/soft skills eg teamwork, leadership, presentation skills etc. NB Not everyone will want to be a leader or a presenter…

Components of the presentation

1. What it is that we want to do in the lab in terms of changing the way that students approach the lab, how they learn in the lab and what they learn.
2. Skills passport as a method to allow us to run very different labs in a very different way.
3. Demonstrate that the passport is transferable to other departments.
4. Q&A

10 minutes for the presentation with 10 minutes for the Q&A.

Must place strong emphasis on the problems with the current lab course.

Build and improve on NSS.

Independent learning part is missing. Few opportunities for students to think.

Enabler versus enhancer.

Make use of clear figures to show what it is that we're proposing.

Notes

• The Hackspace is specifically transferable to other departments.
• Labs do not need to be tired to the bench.
• There should be a reward for effort and progress from one year to the next, not just absolute achievement in a single year.
• The passport tool should be able to demonstrate a student’s progress during their time here and give an opportunity for a student to reflect on their ability and where appropriate or desirable change how they engage with the labs.
• Remove marks associated with individual labs.
• Provide students with an opportunity for self-assessment.
• Points to get across: Our labs are evolving, this is something that we are already doing (LEGO lab as an example) but to continue with this development, additional changes need to be made in terms of assessment and the broader design of the curriculum.

• Assignment of marks is going to be vital, must be seen to be credible and transparent as well as reproducible for 150+ students each year.

• Limited independence in Year 1 - a safety net, with independence growing over time to the point where they truly are driving the curriculum (Year 2/3?).

Skills Passport v1.0

Possible workflow for the chemtracker tool. (Better to edit version.)

Notes

• Specific criteria for each component of the lab, perhaps 3-4 for each, though there would likely need to be more for specific processes and procedures in the synthetic lab. Pull down menu type.
• “Knows”, “knows how”, “shows how”, “does”, “improves style”.
• Possibly with “familiar”, “competent”, “confident” descriptors to further build on the detail provided in the passport.

Include histogram of progress in tracker so that students can track their progress over the year.

OpenBadges

OpenBadges is a technological platform which could be used to implement the passport idea. The badge itself is an openly developed electronic token which is meant to represent some sort of certification (its value depends on the issuer identity). Our use of the badges would correspond to developing a platform for issuing and managing a portfolio of badges. There are several open source implementations that one could seek to adapt.

Moodle is able to award OpenBadges. Check if Blackboard could do the same (contact Blackboard Inc.). - some potentially useful links: https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Performance/Achievements https://elearn.southampton.ac.uk/blackboard/achievements/ https://sites.google.com/site/openbadgesinhighereducation/blackboard and maybe https://www.coursesites.com/webapps/Bb-sites-course-creation-BBLEARN/pages/getstarted.html

Useful spreadsheet and canvas for helping with the design of the system (useful even if OpenBadges end up not being our chosen solution).

We can explore the idea that our badges live beyond the scope of our labs, and be used by students in approaching future employers.

Purpose of the experiment

One of the reasons driving the proposed changes to the lab curriculum is the perception that lab sessions and lab scripts have become over-prescriptive, students end up following the recipe they are given with little learning gain. Most importantly, students almost completely miss the crucial steps of setting the goals, and designing and planning the experiment to achieve them. The emphasis is therefore to give students more responsibility in the development of their lab experience. This increased student responsibility comes mostly in two forms: a more active role in the design of the experiments; more freedom in the choice of experiments and lab curriculum.

We propose to reframe lab experiments into a new classification, more inline with current/research lab practice and less with outdated discipline subdivisions. All experiments should keep a clear relevance for chemistry.

Make it

The core of these experiments is the synthesis of molecules or materials. They should be structured such that the student investigates a synthetic route, choosing appropriate apparatus and procedures, as well as purification and characterization methods. The procedure should not be given but rather investigated. Projects could be complemented with further characterization and use of the synthesised compounds, but the emphasis is on the synthesis work.

Build it

These experiments consist on the construction of a device, object or computer program to perform a specific task. A very clear and well defined design goal is given to students which need to work towards matching that goal.

(While at an abstract level the synthesis of a molecule is the construction of an object, the specificity of methods and considerations involved in synthesis work, and the 8 orders of magnitude difference in size, grant it to be treated under a different category from build it.)

Prove it

The focus of these experiments is in the formulation of an hypothesis in a form that can be tested in the laboratory, and the development of a procedure to test this hypothesis. Students should be able to choose the concept they want to prove (it could be a concept familiar from lectures). There should be an emphasis on the critical analysis of the results and in the discussion of whether the collected data is enough to prove or disprove the hypothesis.

Hack it

It consists of addressing a more complex problem, usually involving an interdisciplinary approach. These could be tackling a practical societal problem or a complex technical problem (for example development or certification of a sensor). They should develop some sort of project management skills, could be done as a group, and involve a proposal type or presentation component.

Type of lab space

• Synthetic
• Hackspace
• PhysChem lab
• Computer room

Lab context should not be defining of an activity, Make it could be in any lab type, a single experiment could, perhaps should provide opportunities for exploration in multiple arenas.

Year 1

Skills

Year 2

Directed towards lab activities with some integration of areas within a single experiment.

Year 3

Students all on their own to decide how they want to investigate and put things into practice.

Experiments should expand beyond just giving a student a script to follow.

Students as scientists

Authentic assessment is key rather than assessment being a mark collecting exercise.

4 types of module/environment – Develop experiments within these types.

Where an experiment exists that is to be retained it would be developed into the new format.

Experiments in Year 3 would be developed into mini-projects.

Make It! Module

Mimi – integrated lab and experiment design. Would be good to have on board with design.

Year 3 Proposal document:

•       Make it! projects – In year 3 students plan and carry out syntheses with an investigative purpose and/or employing data-oriented approaches (cf. Dial-a-Molecule). For example: preparing two catalysts and comparing their selectivity; preparing a molecule via two different multi-step routes and comparing the outcomes; optimising a reaction protocol or literature procedure. The project is primarily synthetic work, structured such that the student investigates a synthetic route, choosing appropriate apparatus and procedures, as well as purification and characterisation methods, but an element of making comparisons must be incorporated in year 3.

Prove It! Module

Year 3 Proposal document:

•       Prove it! projects – In year 3 students design and carry out experimental work attempting to prove, within their selected specific chemical system, their hypothesis derived from concepts encountered in lectures or other study. Students themselves select the concept(s) and propose the project. There should be an emphasis on the critical analysis of the results and in the discussion of whether the collected data is enough to prove or disprove the hypothesis. For example: Prove the relationship between size and colour of quantum dots. Projects may be primarily physical/analytical, synthetic (eg. prove the selectivity of a given reagent), or computational (eg. prove in silico the identities of kinetic and thermodynamic products of a reaction type).

Measure It! Module (<- Build It! Module)

Year 3 Proposal document:

•       Measure it! projects – Progressing from the LEGO spectrometer labs which instill a ‘know how it works’ mentality in addition to principles of measurement science, in year 3 students may design and build a more complex instrument, plan and carry out a challenging measurement, make measurements to investigate a phenomenon.

Hack It! Module

Paul Wilde – 20 potential topics to explore (sarin level detector, Pt extraction from cancer patients etc)

Year 3 lab in 2 parts. Part 1 similar to what was done previously, conceptual and theoretical, part 2 would be the practical application/prototyping. Part 1 needed to do part 2 but no need to do part 2 if you have done part 1.

Flexibility of approach and on the interest of the student.

Group work.

Proposal, presentation, prototype milestones.

Year 3 Proposal document:

•       Hack it! projects – Students carry out research, and potentially practical work based in the Advanced Hack Space, addressing a more complex problem, usually involving an interdisciplinary approach. These could be tackling a practical societal problem or a complex technical problem. For example: can precious metals lost from catalytic converters be recovered from road surfaces?; practical development or certification of a sensor. Projects must be compatible with the deskilled approaches accessible in the hack space.

Practical concerns

Academic Workload model should reflect the time needed to develop a new lab.

Number of hours needed to design a course needs to be established to go to AA (70 hours too conservative).

Those contributing need to be amply compensated for their time and have this recognised.

Year 3 project options - How will these fit with the curriculum? What will the scope of the project be? A project in each of the environments or an opportunity to specialise?

RSC Collaboration

Discussions with RSC early on is going to be essential.

• Accreditation concerns.

• Possible technical support or input into the passport.

• Publicity and potential wider roll out of the scheme.

• RSC funding opportunities?

Advisory board/ steering group which includes industry input.

• P&G, GSK someone from biodiagnostics.

To do:

David

Outline for presentation based on discussions. Approach RSC over partnering.

Laura

Year 3 plan of action. Begin thinking about pictorial representations of approach.

Joao

Look into “badges” as an alternative to passport. Talk to PW about ideas for new labs.