In this presentation we report on the use of research-like experiences in a junior and senior level physical chemistry course designed for biochemistry & molecular biology majors.  Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences (CH 390) at Carroll College is a one-semester course with three 50-minute lecture times per week and one 3.5-hour lab session per week.  Course lecture time was not only used for traditional lectures on course materials; the time was also used for group meetings that facilitated collaboration among the students and supported the formation of learning communities.  The laboratory projects are structured around 6 open-ended lab research projects. A group of students work on a project for 2 weeks, and then passed the project and their findings on to the next group.  The laboratory sessions of the 4 final weeks of the semester were devoted to choose-your-own-adventure experiments, where students propose and execute projects of their own design.  In this course, students are evaluated on their research notebook, communication of experimental data in the form of high quality figures, and instructor observations of their laboratory practices.  All laboratory evaluations were conducted using grading rubrics designed and agreed upon by all the faculty members of the Chemistry Department.  The rubrics have been designed to guide student development as a scientist and to assess student outcomes for the purposes of program assessment.  Pre- and post- course surveys have been used to assess the quality and impact of this course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE); we will present these results in the context of our department’s existing CUREs programming.<br/>

Incorporating research-like experiences in a physical chemistry for the life sciences course

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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