Scaffolding a Final Project

Classes start in a couple of weeks, and I am going to take the plunge by incorporating “Inventing a New Element” as a final project. The initial idea and scope of the project was discussed in an earlier post. I haven’t fleshed out the exact assignment details, but I have been thinking about how to scaffold the project over the course of the semester. The scaffolding idea came out of weekly discussions with one of my colleagues – we both decided to take a stab at “creativity in chemistry” and do something in at least one of our classes in the upcoming semester.

For a number of years, when I meet my first-year students in General Chemistry, I ask them what is their favorite element in the periodic table and why. The responses range from trite to elaborately-thought-out. (There is some time for reflection and staring at a periodic table beforehand.) I think I will do this again, but am thinking of adding an Elements Report assignment due after two weeks of classes. By that point we would have covered basics about elements, atoms, molecules, compounds, subatomic particles, and some nuclear chemistry. Students will pick an element and report on its characteristic properties, history of discovery, how it is found in nature, uses, and maybe how it can be purified. Originally I was thinking of a written report, but maybe it could be an Infographic project.

A week or so later I'm planning to try out a modified version of my Alien Periodic Table discovery activity that gives students a sense of how (difficult it is) to come up with an organizing principle when you have a bunch of data that may pull you in different directions. Not only that, it is incomplete, and you don’t quite know which data is valuable or possibly erroneous. As modern techniques allow one to probe into atomic structure, an organizational principle begins to emerge. While this involves lots of in-class activity, the assignment I am planning is a written reflection. The idea is to have students engage in a meta-cognitive assessment of all that activity (some of which will be quite frustrating, but in a good way).

About two-thirds into the semester when I’ve finished chemical bonding (ionic, covalent, metallic), the plan is to have another assignment where the students dream up new compounds by combining different elements, to some extent stretching the limits of reality, and try to make some predictions on the properties of their exotic creations. At this point we will also have discussed the properties of solids, and several other macroscopic bulk properties. This will hopefully then lead into the final project on the Invention of a New Element. I’m thinking of dividing them into scientific teams, and they write a proposal of a new element they would like to create, what its properties would be (including how it would interact with known elements), and to justify their choice. The written proposal will lead to a poster session where groups will present their results. I haven’t decided whether there should be a final paper.

Being in a system motivated by grades, one of the things I will have to do is adjust my typical graded assignment percentages, so the project and its scaffolding activities will be a decent chunk of the grade. Concomitantly, I should reduce the percentage going to exams (typically 80-85% in the past). I will also need a bit more class time for additional activities in class to support the scaffolding. Therefore my current idea is to turn the usual mid-semester in-class exams into take-home exams that are very low stakes (2% full marks given just for taking the exam). The students will be instructed to take them timed and closed-book as a self-test. (Self-testing was given a high relative utility in a recent paper.) I think they won’t “cheat” because there will still be an in-class two-hour Final Exam worth at least a third of the course grade. So they would be motivated to replicate exam conditions (albeit not in the same physical classroom) without penalty to their grade. I will of course provide comments when I “grade” these. My plan is to have four of them, the first one an hour long, and then adding 15, 30 and 45 minutes to the next three. This helps the student build up stamina and also allows me more flexibility to integrate material in the exam.

Regular readers of my blog will know that parts of this strategy are not new. Over a year ago, I made an attempt to do many of these things along with trying to de-emphasize grades and move students towards intrinsic motivation. That met with mixed success. This time around I think I am more cognizant not to overload the students, and I see this as an improved iteration with some new aspects, but also scaled down in other areas that I learned were over-ambitious. We’ll see how this goes!