ABSTRACT: Too often learning and teaching are done in isolation. When the instructor feels alone in front of a sea of students, they forget that many students feel isolated and alone. Quantitative analysis—where each student receives a unique unknown—provides a powerful context to foster group and peer-to-peer learning, which mitigate isolation and promote deeper learning. I will share some strategies for fostering such learning communities.
But the instructor is still alone. In many colleges there is a single analytical instructor. Regional workshops and national symposia on teaching analytical chemistry build and foster communities of analytical instructors. I will share tactics that I have used to develop both types of forums.
BIO: Dr. Charles (Chuck) Lucy is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta. He has co-authored over 160 research papers, and received the W.A.E. McBryde Medal and Maxxam Award from the Canadian Society of Chemistry. Chuck is also a passionate teacher who has taught classes of 400+ freshman students to discovery based graduate lectures. He was involved in development of a second-year research program1 and a course about careers in chemistry.2 But his primary teaching has been introductory analytical chemistry. He was a contributing author to the 9th edition of Daniel Harris’s Quantitative Chemical Analysis, and is a co-author of the upcoming 10th edition.
Chuck is a 3M National Teaching Fellow; and the Chemical Institute of Canada’s Award for Chemistry Education; and this year the UofA Interdepartmental Science Student Society’s Excellence in Teaching Award and the American Chemical Society’s Calvin Gidding’s Award in Analytical Chemistry Education.