First-year undergraduate nursing students enrolled in an undergraduate Chemistry for Health professions course have often exhibited an initial aversion to chemical education. As first year’s undergraduates, enrollees commence their chemical education based on a variety of High School learning mechanisms. This presents two obstacles: i) A self-perceived difficulty on the part of the student, with learning chemistry topics and ii) A lofty goal for the instructor to properly access student comprehension of chemistry topics, at the beginning of lectures. To remedy these concerns, the author has found that a prelude to chemical education in the class, in the form of a joke, pun, meme or video has aided in the introduction and review of chapter topics, as well as asway the perceived intimidation of chemical education (I.C.E.) Breakers for first year non-majors. ICE Breakers were designed in five categories: I) Introductory, II) Segway, III) Review, IV) Gauge and V) General. This presentation will define each ICE Breaker category, outline the use of chemical education joke, pun, meme or video with matching chemical education topic and lastly, present data on qualitative student participant responses (N = 134) to the efficacy of ICE Breakers as chemical education tools, in an undergraduate nursing course. Qualitative Analysis: An anonymous qualitative survey performed with participants (N = 134) highlighted the efficacy of ICE Breakers as 1) tension breakers, 2) aids in learning and recall of chemistry topics and 3) preferred and recommended by undergraduate nursing students - of which 94.03% (n = 126) students agreed they would recommend the continued use of ICE Breakers in the chemistry for undergraduate nursing lecture.

I.C.E. breakers: Chemistry jokes, puns and memes to introduce chemistry topics to undergraduate nursing students

ACS Spring 2022

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