Towards an Integrated Polymer Education: Development of Biodegradable Polymer Laboratory Unit

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Engineering - Chemical (53)A current research area of significant environmental, economic, and scientific importance is biodegradable polymers. This interdisciplinary biotechnology area requires the expertise of chemical engineers, material engineers, polymer engineers, biochemists, and microbiologists. Biodegradable polymers is an area that has great promise for being used to integrate life science into programs that do not traditionally get life-science exposure. To this point, however, high quality laboratory manuals on biodegradable polymers have not been developed. Therefore, a laboratory unit titled "Biodegradable Polymer Characterization" has been developed and has been separately packaged to meet the needs of K-12, undergraduate, and graduate students. The experiments we included in the manuals have been adopted from techniques used in academic and industrial research on biodegradable polymers. Our laboratory unit has been designed to provide a unique hands-on educational experience to students by exposing a variety of polymer samples to simulated biomass environments and characterizing the samples against the exposure time. The students determine relationships between polymer structures and biodegradation properties. They are challenged to use statistical methods to determine which polymer physical and chemical property measurements best correlate with biodegradability. Through this process, students will develop a vivid understanding of fundamental principles of polymer science, as well as the important of societal and environmental issues with polymer materials design, manufacturing, and applications. Pedagogy that has been demonstrated to be effective in improving student learning, e.g., cooperative learning, formative assessment and feedback, and reflective writing, will be incorporated into the laboratory materials to be developed. Some parts of our experiment have been adapted for use in internet-based laboratories. The CCLI project #0126910 of Dr. Lipscomb (Chemical Engineering, University of Toledo) that involves the development and analysis of three internet-based unit operations experiments will be consulted in the development of the remote experiments. Assessment methods that this project is using to compare remote and hands-on experiments will be adapted for the biodegradable polymer project. To facilitate use by other faculty members, the laboratory unit will be documented as a laboratory manual complete with introductory material, detailed experimental procedures, cooperative learning exercises, formative assessment exercises, reflective writing exercises, and supporting reference materials. Our manual will be presented at professional conferences, posted on the worldwide web, and sent nationally to departments that may have interest in it.