An Interactive, Web-Based Materials Characterization Project for Undergraduate Education in Analytical Chemistry

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Much recent attention in chemical education has been focused on the need for "problem-based" learning strategies, particularly in the laboratory environment. No place is the need for the development of problem-solving skills more evident than in young scientists who function as analytical chemists in industrial, government, and academic laboratories. This need has become so acute that industry has recently called upon the academic community to reexamine their training of chemistry students, particularly in the quantitative and instrumental analysis laboratories. One particular concern expressed by industry and government laboratory analytical chemists is that students emerging with undergraduate degrees today have only a technique-based perspective on chemical analysis instead of viewing chemical analysis as an integrated process based on problem solving. Thus, in academia's zeal to provide hands-on exposure to every new instrumental analysis method that is developed, education of students in the integrated concept of the "analytical process" has been lost. To remedy this curricular deficiency nationwide necessitates a broader recommitment to a pedagogy based on the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills in our students. While the desirability of achieving this goal through increased emphasis on hands-on laboratory problem-solving experiences is obvious, the reality for many institutions today, particularly small four-year colleges, is that they lack the necessary complement of analytical instrumentation for effective solution of modern real-world problems in their undergraduate analytical chemistry laboratories. The recent explosion in new electronic technology affords, as a supplement to the central hands-on component of the laboratory curriculum, the opportunity to enhance the problem solving skills of students through interactive computer-based experiences. This project is designed to take advantage of recent developments in the analytical curriculum at the Unive rsity of Arizona to demonstrate the feasibility of production of an interactive, prototype, hypermedia-based Materials Characterization Project on the World Wide Web in which the student undertakes a comprehensive analysis, with both qualitative and quantitative aspects, of a commercial product, device, or formulation. This computer-based experience is intended as a supplement to the more conventional laboratory-based training in undergraduate analytical chemistry. This experience will require the student to chemically analyze several major components of a common commercial product by defining the analysis approach, selecting the analysis method(s) required, designing the measurement experiments, "collecting" the data, interpreting the data, and arriving at conclusions about chemical composition and content based on the data. The prototype Materials Characterization Project to be developed is based on analysis of the components of a solar electronic calculator.