Capstone courses have become the culminating chemical experience for many ACS undergraduates, yet course content and designs are widely variable. To enhance students’ critical reflection of their undergraduate training in chemistry and biochemistry, we developed a capstone course that emphasized the role of their education in professional goals and ethical development using modern tools of communication, including electronic portfolios, chemical blogs and Khan Academy-style, interactive teaching videos. Electronic portfolios proved essential to the capstone course by providing a unique and versatile creative space for students to not only post variable media artifacts, but also to engage in timely student-driven peer-review. Students also developed their personalized professional electronic portfolio pages tuned to chosen target audiences, which ultimately enhanced the summative reflection of their undergraduate chemistry experience. As a result of this capstone course, students produced dynamic, integrative teaching videos of such high quality that some are being used as a resource library for introductory chemistry courses. In addition, students learned the importance and challenge of communicating chemical fundamentals to a broad public audience using interactive media, as well as communicating their professional goals and intentions using innovative electronic platforms.

Electrifying the capstone chemistry experience

249th National Meeting (2015)

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