Fine-Tuning and Natural Theology

This new academic year I’m participating in one of those academic-residential “live and learn” communities that have been quite popular at colleges and universities in the United States. In my college, the program manifests itself by grouping several small first-year student classes under a broad theme. Students in the program live in the same residential space, and several activities are organized throughout the year to build community and have students connect what they’re learning in (at least one of) their classes with a broader theme. The college started piloting this program approximately five years ago with a few linked courses and quickly ramped up to 100% participation of all incoming students. My first-year chemistry class (with only incoming first-year students) is one of six classes linked by the theme “Faith and Reason”. Three of the classes are in the sciences; three are in the humanities.

Since the General Chemistry curriculum is very tight, I won’t be able to give up too much class time to exploring the intersection of faith and reason. We will certainly have some discussions about the “scientific method”, how science approaches trying to answer questions about the natural world (particularly in the context of chemical discovery) and compare/contrast this to how faith-based approaches get at knowledge. I look forward to including a little bit of philosophy, and a little more history into my classes, in lieu of the theme. However, I’m hoping that much of the interesting discussion will take place outside of class-meeting times through online blogging and discussion. I’ve had students write blogs in two of my classes prior, using the university’s Learning Management System (LMS) platform. I must admit that I don’t like the way our LMS handles blogs and so this time around I’ve created a Blogger group for multiple authors. I hope this works more robustly.

To prepare for class I’ve been doing some reading last semester and this summer at the intersection of faith and science (since science is my domain, and I don’t have as much philosophical training). I’ve read maybe five books in the last six months, the latest of which is Alister McGrath’s A Fine-Tuned Universe, subtitled The Quest for God in Science and Theology. Given my interests in Origin of Life research, I was looking forward to chapter 10 where the author addresses the origins of life. I was a little disappointed. There is the usual broad sweep from nucleosynthesis to biological life stopping at anthropic signposts such as the carbon resonance (Hoyle and Fowler), the uniqueness of phosphate in life (Westheimer), the “curious chemistry of water” (the subtitle to chapter 11), and examples of convergent evolution (Conway Morris). The phrase biological fine-tuning is used in a number of places to knit together a range of phenomena.

Alister McGrath has an interesting background. An atheist who became a Christian, he has doctorates in molecular biophysics, theology and intellectual history. He currently holds a professorship in Science and Religion at Oxford. I was expecting a book that would focus on arguments related to the anthropic principle but instead I got a very thoughtful treatise about the intellectual history of natural theology.

Most discussions I have come across about natural theology or the anthropic principle seem limited (at least to me) in terms of building some sort of a bridge between scientific and philosophical approaches. But McGrath’s broadening of this area, by considering the many contributors to its intellectual history, is enlightening. The most enlightening part was for me to learn how Paley’s (in)famous watchmaker argument (usually assumed as the archetype whenever the word “natural theology” is mentioned), is actually a narrow slice of Enlightenment (the era) influence on intellectual ideas at that time in history. McGrath traces a variety of natural theology approaches over different eras, back to Augustine’s rationales seminales. The other very helpful principle that McGrath reminded me is that fine-tuning “arguments” do not have to be made deductively – and he lays out a vision using an abductive argument. Consonance rather than proof seems to be the goal.

I appreciated McGrath’s approach of using abductive reasoning (“inference to the best explanation”) since I approach science as a pragmatist. I’m no philosopher, but I’m happy to broaden my reading interests – and as a practicing scientist and teacher, it’s a good thing for me to think about the intellectual history and philosophy of science. I don’t know if fine-tuning will come up in a discussion with my students (I’m not teaching a physics or biology class) but we’ll most likely have some interesting and lively discussion when we hit a unit on radioactivity, and therefore radioisotope dating methods related to the age of the earth). I’m also reading up in this area to prepare myself. I’m certainly enjoying learning new things – I hope the students do too!

Teaching for Creativity

I’ve been working my way through Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom, a collection of essays by academics in an edited volume by Ronald Beghetto and James Kaufman. Although primarily aimed at the primary and secondary levels, I think there are some general lessons for tertiary education. Here is a partial list off the top of my head.

1. One can teach for creativity, although educational policies have often resulted in teachers aiming to cover content standards resulting in creativity being neglected.

2. The Arts are important for creative expression, but they are not the only place where creativity can be fostered – other areas in the social sciences, humanities, the natural sciences, and mathematics can leverage teaching for creativity.

3. Creative thinking isn’t just divergent thinking; there is in fact an important role for going back and forth between divergent and convergent thinking. Unfortunately most “tests for creativity” mainly test divergent thinking.

4. There is a competition between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and the latter often drives out the former and can in some cases negatively impact creative thinking in students.

The essay that struck me most thus far is “Teaching for Creativity in an Era of Content Standards and Accountability” by John Baer and Tracey Garrett. Its main premise: “Teaching for creativity and teaching for specific content need not be in opposition… Creative thinking actually requires significant content knowledge, and thinking creatively about a topic helps deepen one’s knowledge of that topic.”

I could not do justice summarizing the clear prose by the authors so I will simply quote sections from their essay. I encourage interested readers to get the book and read this essay in full (it’s #2 of 19).

“There is a sense among many educators that the push for stricter content standards will decrease the amount of time teachers can allocate to the teaching of thinking skills. There is also a concern that content standards will encourage teachers to limit their instruction to that which will be tested.”

“We cannot deny that this happens. But there is significant evidence that the introduction of explicit content standards does not lessen students’ creativity; in fact, it may do just the opposite.” (The authors then cover some of the studies bolstering this point.)

“Thinking depends heavily on knowledge… Mistakes in everyday critical thinking are more often the result of faulty premises (i.e., incorrect factual knowledge) than a lack of general problem-solving skills… It seems that content knowledge is essential to serious thinking, that teaching content-free thinking skills is not possible, that higher-level thinking requires the automatization of lower-level skills, and that to improve students’ thinking in a given domain, students must acquire an understanding of much factual content about that domain as well as a variety of domain-specific cognitive skills.” This last (rather long) sentence summarizes discussions/arguments I’ve had with colleagues over the skills/content divide. I don’t think there’s a divide, but there are others who do.

“So we must teach students content knowledge if we want to improve their thinking. Conversely, often the best way to teach content knowledge is to get students [to] become actively engaged [cognitively] with the content to be learned [and not just being] physically active or emotionally engaged.”

“This is not to suggest that all is well and that there is no conflict between content standards (and test-based accountability) and teaching for creativity. There are very real problems…” The authors go on to discuss some of the problems, and how many of them can be avoided.

“The most effective ways to teach skills and content knowledge often involve the very same activities one would emphasize to promote creative thinking… Although there are situations in which these two goals are at odds, they are more often synergistically linked. More creativity will often lead to more content knowledge, and more content knowledge will lead to more creativity. But there are a few bumps on the road to this educational nirvana…”

Reading this essay has gotten me excited about how to restructure how I use some of my class time (and hence what to assign for outside of class work). Unlike last semester where I attempted a major overhaul of a single class, this time around I am going to be less ambitious and make incremental changes to some of the class sessions. I signed up to teach General Chemistry I in the TuTh (two 1.5-hour sessions) rather than the MWF (three 1-hour sessions) to allow more class activity time in a single stretch. For a long time we only had MWF “lecture” sessions because of the way lectures and labs were scheduled but with recent increasing enrollments we’ve started to experiment with (usually) one TuTh section. By virtue of volunteering to take this time slot, I will have to change the well-oiled plan I have been using for years.

Stay tuned for more of my ideas (or things I’m going to try out) as I blog about them!

Letter from a former student to new students

I am looking forward to teaching first semester General Chemistry this coming Fall semester. This is a class I teach almost every year, and I still look forward to trying a few new things. I’d been thinking about different ways to help my students succeed in this class, and one item I’ll be adding to my class web page is a letter from a student in my class last Fall addressed to my students this Fall. I’m sure I read this idea somewhere, but doing something about it didn’t click until I passed this student in the hallway last semester. I remembered her from my class because she was one of the few students who clearly demonstrated the desire and will to improve. She had started the class doing rather poorly, had a wake-up call, and then improved incrementally with each successive exam, and ended up with a high B in the class (putting her in the top 20%). She came to office hours, asked good questions, and clearly put in the work needed to master the material. It was impressive to see her improve. If only more students did this.

Anyway, I thought she would be the right person to write such a letter, so here it is (redacted for identifying information) and with no guidance from me. I simply asked her to write about what she did that helped her improve her learning in the class. I did ask her permission first before posting.

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Dear [G-Chem I] Student,

Let me start off by saying congratulations and welcome to [name of institution]!  As a past [G-Chem I] student of [Dr. H] I have been in your exact place and I survived.  I’m sure many of you were like me, in the top of your class and sporting an exhausting number of AP classes.  Let me tell you from experience that college is a completely new and exciting challenge.  When I first got to college I was very arrogant thinking that I would continue to obtain easy A’s, but I was wrong.  After getting my first chemistry test back I realized that college wasn’t going to be a breeze and that I was going to have to really put in the time to change my study habits in order to be more successful. 

My number one suggestion is take advantage of office hours!  Everyone will give you this piece of advice and I strongly encourage you to take it.  Come prepared with lots of questions.  Sometimes even coming and listening to another student’s questions might make you realize something you missed or give you a chance to explain the answer.  Being able to fully explain in detail a certain question shows a strong knowledge of the material. If you aren’t able to teach the topic to someone else then you should review it until you can.  Also, be sure to do the practice test that [Dr. H] provides as they will allow you to test yourself and reveal any areas in need of improvement.  Looking over notes before and after lecture will help cement new and challenging material to memory.  Take the pop quizzes at the beginning of class as another way to find weaknesses that may require additional study time.  By studying over time, like this, studying for an exam wouldn’t be an all-night process but instead it would only take me an hour or less to quickly review the material.  Although I found these strategies beneficial, it is important to know that there is no definite recipe for a good grade, but trying a variety of study strategies will help you find what’s best for you.

You all have the ability to be successful and I hope that somehow you can learn from my failures as well as my success.  I strongly encourage you to explore study strategies and not to be discouraged if the ones you used previously no longer give a desirable outcome.  Lastly, don’t let a bad test score make you believe that you can’t be successful; improvement is definitely possible, and trust me, you can recover.

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My General Chemistry syllabus regularly includes a section on “how to study for this course”. Although I point it out to students at least 2-4 times during the course of the semester, I wonder how often students actually follow the “advice” coming from me. Maybe hearing advice from a fellow student who was willing to put in the work will make an impact. We’ll see how it goes.

Conference Abstracts: Is the work done?

Tomorrow I’m heading to the national American Chemical Society (ACS) conference. I try to attend one ACS conference per year and present some of the work in my research group. Sometimes I bring the undergraduates from my research lab (and they present posters of their work), other times I don’t. Since the national conference is large (this one will have ~14,000 attendees), conference abstracts are due five months ahead of time. Smaller conferences that I have attended require less lead-time.

Over the years, I have vacillated back and forth between whether to write the abstract on a research project that is nearly done or one that is in the early stages. In the former, there are plenty of results to show and it is easy to put the story together. Often, by the time the conference rolls around, I already have the complete story. Sometimes the peer-reviewed manuscript has been published by the time I talk about it. A lot can happen in five months.

Or very little could happen. Not in terms of work, but in terms of results. Five months ago, there were several projects I could highlight. (I usually submit just one abstract – I’ve never been turned away from giving a talk before.) This time I decided on the most ambitious project, and I had some preliminary data suggesting that things might work well when the time came around to present the work. This hasn’t happened yet – I don’t have a main punchline to the story although I have interesting “work in progress” results and analysis. I expect to be asking the audience for help in figuring out some of the issues although I broadly know what the problems are. Perhaps this is what conferences should be about – new, current, incomplete work, that the scientific community comes together to help solve. Certain smaller and more exclusive conferences that I’ve attended have such guidelines, but usually the larger national meeting is about showcasing work (for job seekers).

Interestingly one of the projects that I had conceived six months ago, but did not get started until three months ago, has yielded a slew of results and a nice story that I can write up soon. Sometimes things work well. This project was not the one I had written on my abstract, so I won’t be talking about it at the conference. (The undergraduate who worked on it will present it at the next ACS conference in March – the abstract will be due in the next 1-2 months and will be easy to write because we already know the results.)

I considered putting in a bunch of extra work right before the conference to see if I could make substantial headway in getting “results” but I decided against it. This will be one of the few times I won’t have a complete story, but instead I might have more audience participation and hear good suggestions to move the project forward. This should be what it means to be a community of learning!

Creating Infographics: A Project for Students

Today I participated an American Chemical Society (ACS) Webinar on “Science Communication: Visual Chemistry by Design”. The main presenter was Andy Brunning, a high school chemistry teacher in England, and the creator of Compound Interest – a showcase of his Infographics. (Go check them out!) Apparently he had started out making infographics for his classes, showed them to some of his friends, and then created a website so they could download his material.

What is an infographic? Here’s what Wikipedia has to say: “Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system's ability to see patterns and trends.”

ACS does a great job with its Webinars. There’s a feed that you can use for Q&A with someone other than the main presenter who answers straightforward questions, includes tips and weblinks in real-time, compiles submitted questions and summarizes them for Q&A with the main presenter in the second half of the session, and does little things to help the participants feel engaged. There were several polls interspersed in the first half of the presentation too. I felt I was engaging in an information-rich learning environment, and it was a good reminder that online tools and technology, when used in the right way, can be a powerful medium to engage the learner.

The webinar was also very useful because it exposed me to a number of tools that I, and more importantly my students, can use. I was reflecting on how I can incorporate this aspect of communicating science into my classes, and then it dawned on me – make it an assignment in (at least one of) my classes. I’d been mulling how to structure a final project in my Chemistry & Society course (aimed at non-science majors). In the past I’ve had the students do some research on a chemical everyday product and write a short paper. For smaller classes the students do presentations. For larger classes, students work in groups. I didn’t fancy reading and having to grade a bunch of papers at the end of the semester so I think I might assign designing an infographic as a final project. While I will be responsible for assigning the final grade, I could incorporate peer review into the process. I think the students will find it both useful and fun! Now I need to drill down and refine the parameters of the assignment. But I’m excited to do this! The Webinar hour was time very well spent!

P.S. I apologize to my regular readers for the dearth of posts the last couple of weeks. Life interferes on occasion – this time in a good way!