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Everyday Chemical Reactions: A Writing Assignment to Promote Synthesis of Concepts and Relevance in Chemistry
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Abstract
Capturing the interest of students in required chemistry courses is a problem for which many solutions have been proposed and described. The solution proposed here is the use of a writing assignment on everyday chemical reactions. Students select their own organic reaction and apply concepts learned throughout the semester to understanding it. The assignment requires the synthesis of many concepts and has been quite challenging. During the course of three semesters the assignment has been modified to include incremental deadlines with feedback prior to the final paper deadline as a means to improve students' learning and their papers. Considerable improvements in the quality of the final papers, most notably at the low end of the grading scale, have been observed. On semester-end evaluations and in direct feedback to the instructor, students have responded favorably to the assignment.
Keywords (Audience):
High School / Introductory ChemistryKeywords (Domain):
Chemical Education ResearchKeywords (Pedagogy):
Communication / WritingKeywords (Subject):
Nonmajor CoursesCiting Articles
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- Received: August 03, 2009
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