Most liberal arts chemistry courses use real-world context to introduce general chemistry content.  In the course Why Things Work: Everyday Chemistry the real-world context is the focus, with just enough chemistry content presented to explain the real-world context.  The student population in this course consists of students at all levels and from all majors.  A variety of real-world contexts are included in the course, such as everyday products (glowsticks, water filters, plastic and hot packs), environmental issues (global warming, nuclear power, recycling and acid rain), kitchen chemistry (gum, food dye, baking and frying eggs) and health (generic drugs, steroids, viruses and opioids).  Discussion board posts will be analyzed to assess student interest in the various topics.  Each week a discussion prompt is posted, and the number of posts related to different categories will be compared.  To determine the effectiveness of these real-world contexts as a way to improve student learning, student performance on exam questions was compared as a function of context type. Exam questions were grouped into three general categories: questions that focused on chemistry content, questions that focused on products and questions that focused on environmental issues.  Students performed significantly better on questions associated with environmental issues compared to the other two categories.

Which real-world contexts are most effective in a liberal arts chemistry course?

ACS Fall 2020 Virtual Meeting

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