Choosing Themes and Projects

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Analytical Sciences Digital Library

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The themes for this approach to advanced analytical chemistry lab can vary on the basis of faculty interest and expertise or student interest. The overall goal is to create a theme that is sufficiently broad to allow for interpretation and student development of ideas. While selecting a theme in which the faculty has expertise is helpful, it is not as important as selecting a theme on the basis of faculty interest. The theme-based approach can be used to begin exploration into a new field of research or generate ideas for collaborative studies across disciplines. Selection of the theme should be done prior to the start of the class, and is often published along with the schedule of classes so that students can enroll in a course that aligns with their interests.

Selection of the project or projects within the theme is student-driven, but often is accompanied by some guidance from the instructor. In some cases, students are instructed to read and survey the research literature related to the theme and identify some knowledge gap that could be addressed through experimentation. A great way for students to organize their findings is to require a formal proposal. One example of a proposal guide used at Butler University is provided (Appendix A), but other variations have been employed. Often this planning process leads to rather grandiose plans where sample number and analysis time would limit the ability to collect meaningful data. The instructor should lead the students to an understanding of the types of data they will be collecting (using some sort of sample grid) so that the students can make a decision to trim the project down to a reasonable and manageable size. When students have very little exposure to a topic or the theme is too broad, the instructor can provide a bit more definition to the theme-based course using a contrived scenario or a list of topics from which the students can choose and explore. Examples of these types of guiding documents are provided (Appendixes B and C).

Another important factor in selecting both the theme and the projects within the theme is instrument availability. Themes should be selected that make the best use of departmental equipment, and students should be introduced to the instrument holdings prior to project selection. Often, students will find an interesting study from the literature that employs an instrumental technique unavailable at the institution. In this case, students could be asked to adapt the procedure to make use of current instrument holdings.

To encourage diversity of instrumentation, faculty should also encourage students to incorporate multiple instrumental techniques into their project(s). Examples of student-selected projects which incorporate multiple instruments are:

Analysis of gunshot residue (GSR) by IC and ICPMS

Biochemical analysis by fluorescence and electrochemistry

Forensic analyses using FTIR, LCMS, and GCMS

In general, the theme and proposed projects often fit well together and, with faculty input, the resulting projects lead to interesting data from which the students can draw meaningful conclusions.