Journal and Glossary

This Fall semester I will be teaching a special topics course on the “Chemical Origins of Life”. We will be reading the primary literature, starting with Stanley Miller’s famous 1953 paper, progressing through some of the significant milestones, grappling with recent findings, and speculating on the future of the field – maybe discussing finding life on Mars!

Here’s the overall plan: Early in the semester, for at least the first month, I will provide guiding questions for each paper, and lead the discussions. Midway through the semester, students will take over preparing the guiding questions and leading the discussions – how and when exactly that happens will depend on enrollment. In the later stages, I will take over leading again as students prepare for their final project: writing a paper and an oral presentation on recent work in the field. I will likely provide students with a list of potential topics; they would also be free to propose their own topics. There might be some short quizzes and possibly one short exam in the first half of the semester to solidify content knowledge, hopefully aiding students as they approach the final project.

I’m considering having the students keep a journal on their thoughts related to class, drawing from their readings and discussions. I’ve had students maintain blogs and participate in online discussion groups a couple of times in my smaller G-Chem classes, but with mixed results. I’m trying to navigate the balance between individual learning and communal learning. I emphasize the former over the latter, because each student as an individual must demonstrate understanding of chemistry – and this involves the hard work one must do individually grappling with the material, while getting help when you’re stuck! But I also recognize the latter can be important, and I encourage students in G-Chem and P-Chem to work together on problem sets and studying for exams.

Thus, I’m considering having the students submit their journals maybe every 3-4 weeks (with minimum two entries per week since class meets twice a week). Assuming these are electronic, I could assign one or two other peer readers, and the next submission should also contain an entry reflecting on reading a peer’s entries. As the instructor, I’m looking forward to reading these entries because it might give me a better idea what the students are thinking outside of class when they’re reading. I should probably provide some journal entry examples from my own reading, which means I actually need to start journaling. I also think a glossary should be included since I regularly need to look up the definition of a word when reading outside my field. My students will have a similar experience encountering new terminology in the papers they read.

I’m also thinking of having the students propose their own grade at the end of the semester. If they’ve been journaling, hopefully they’re more aware of how much they know, how much they don’t know, and how much they think they’re learning. They’d also know how much effort they’ve put into the class relative to their other classes. I’d like to know too, and I suspect it will be mentioned as justification for the proposed grade. I would still finally decide on the final grade. When I introduced exam self-grading in G-Chem last year, I noticed that some students would grade themselves higher or lower than what I would have given. (Their proposed grades had no impact on their actual grades.)

Maybe their last journal entry should be a self-evaluation of their learning upon re-reading their journal, and with that their proposed self-grade on whatever criteria they deem important. If the final project constitutes 30% of the grade, their discussion leading/prep 20%, other small assignments 20%, then the journal (and the nebulous “class participation”) might constitute 30%. Or maybe I shouldn’t think about percentage breakdowns and do a holistic evaluation at semester’s end. I don’t know. I’d like to de-emphasize grade-bean-counting. And I still have time to figure it out. What I should do is start writing a few journal entries with accompanying glossary!