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

生物可降解聚合物是当前具有环境、经济和科学重要性的一个研究领域。这个跨学科的生物技术领域需要化学工程师、材料工程师、聚合物工程师、生物化学家和微生物学家的专业知识。生物可降解聚合物是一个很有前途的领域，它被用于将生命科学整合到传统上不涉及生命科学的项目中。然而，到目前为止，还没有开发出关于生物可降解聚合物的高质量实验室手册。因此，一个名为“可生物降解聚合物表征”的实验室单元已经开发出来，并已单独包装，以满足K-12，本科生和研究生的需求。我们在手册中包含的实验采用了在学术和工业研究中使用的生物可降解聚合物的技术。我们的实验室单元旨在通过将各种聚合物样品暴露在模拟生物质环境中并根据暴露时间表征样品，为学生提供独特的动手教育体验。学生确定聚合物结构和生物降解性能之间的关系。他们面临的挑战是使用统计方法来确定哪些聚合物的物理和化学性质测量与生物降解性最相关。通过这个过程，学生将对高分子科学的基本原理，以及高分子材料设计、制造和应用中社会和环境问题的重要性有一个生动的理解。已被证明对提高学生学习效果有效的教学法，如合作学习、形成性评估和反馈以及反思性写作，将被纳入待开发的实验材料中。我们实验的某些部分已被改编用于基于互联网的实验室。Lipscomb博士（托莱多大学化学工程）的CCLI项目#0126910涉及三个基于互联网的单元操作实验的开发和分析，将在远程实验的开发中进行咨询。本项目用于比较远程实验和动手实验的评估方法将适用于生物可降解聚合物项目。为了方便其他教师使用，实验单元将以实验手册的形式记录下来，包括介绍材料、详细的实验程序、合作学习练习、形成性评估练习、反思性写作练习和辅助参考材料。我们的手册将在专业会议上展示，发布在全球网络上，并在全国范围内发送给可能对此感兴趣的部门。

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.