New College of Florida chemistry and biochemistry graduates are expected to be able to navigate and critically interact with the entire chemical literature landscape – from science news to discipline-specific, peer-reviewed articles. Students demonstrate these abilities by designing and conducting an original research project culminating in writing and defending an honors thesis before graduating. Therefore, students must learn early in their academic careers to choose and refine a topic worthy of study, locate, evaluate, and synthesize different sources of chemical information, and effectively communicate their research to the public. A pair of scaffolded writing assignments were incorporated into NCF’s Organic Chemistry sequence to help students begin developing these skills. In Organic Chemistry I, students write three “In-the-News” reflections that: describe their article-finding process, summarize article highlights, and comment on how understanding organic chemistry informs their reading of the article. In Organic Chemistry II, students create literature-cited Wiki articles for organic molecules that don’t have existing Wikipedia entries. Scaffolded tasks for this project include: writing an introduction and outline, participating in peer review of first drafts, responding to reviewer comments, and uploading their article to NCF’s Organic Chemistry Wiki (https://dss.ncf.edu/chemwiki/index.php/Main_Page). Collaborations with NCF’s Library, Writing Resource Center, and Education Technology Services throughout the year introduce students to scholarly research and writing resources. In these assignments, students must navigate chemistry databases (i.e. SciFinder, PubChem, etc.), summarize and evaluate information provided in various genres (i.e. science news, peer-reviewed articles, Wiki articles, etc.), and conduct a scholarly peer review. In this talk, I’ll share learning objectives, timelines, assessment rubrics, and outcomes for each term project, along with lessons learned and plans for future modifications.

Writing science news article reflections and wiki articles in organic chemistry to build student chemical literature and information management skills

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.