Chemistry Unbound: Designing a New Four-Year Undergraduate Curriculum

Abstract

This article describes the process of designing a new four-year curriculum at Emory University. Acknowledging the limitations of traditional curricula and pedagogy, the major goals of this reform effort include an emphasis on core ideas and scientific practices rather than content and historical course boundaries in order to convey the excitement, relevance, and interdisciplinary nature of 21st century chemistry to undergraduate students.

Potential for Chemistry in Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary, and Transdisciplinary Teaching Activities in Higher Education

“…A few examples of the application of topics discussed in the paper (real-world problems addressed, curriculum development and implementation, administration, and outcomes/feedback) to common elements of curricula (lectures/tutorials, instructed lab work, and research) are highlighted in Table 9, with an interesting example of course design from scratch from McGill and co-workers also touching on these topics. 192 Engagement with MITT activities in well-designed curricula should equip students with a 21st-century skills set 28,72,305,306 that underpins their employability.…”

“…), ,,,− and potentially specialist elements of other curricula (e.g., arts and humanities [e.g., archeology and architecture, , art and design, patent law], business and management, technician support, etc.). However, effective MITT curriculum design is a challenge, particularly achieving the appropriate balance of monodisciplinary/intradisciplinary content and integrated MITT options that ensure students have the opportunity to develop both in-depth knowledge of monodisciplinary subject matter and insight into different disciplinary approaches to problem solving . A notable barrier to MITT curriculum design is ensuring curricular coherence and integration, especially when there are disagreements between staff from different disciplines about the specific content and methodology of delivery .…”

“…However, effective MITT curriculum design is a challenge, particularly achieving the appropriate balance of monodisciplinary/intradisciplinary content and integrated MITT options that ensure students have the opportunity to develop both in-depth knowledge of monodisciplinary subject matter and insight into different disciplinary approaches to problem solving . A notable barrier to MITT curriculum design is ensuring curricular coherence and integration, especially when there are disagreements between staff from different disciplines about the specific content and methodology of delivery . A potential solution to issues of curricular coherence and integration is to ensure interactions between academics during all stages of curriculum design with regular meetings with module leaders presenting module plans to ensure awareness of the curriculum structure (potentially including modules taught by a multidisciplinary team of academics talking about a particular phenomenon, e.g., enzyme binding as a cross-cutting example of structure and function in biology, biochemistry, and chemistry) .…”

The American Chemical Society General Chemistry Performance Expectations Project: From Task Force to Distributed Process for Implementing Multidimensional Learning

“…While the research enterprise associated with the Chemical Thinking curriculum is less extensive than CLUE, Talanquer and Pollard showed that its use is associated with higher ACS exam scores and organic chemistry grades when compared to historical data. Emory University’s Chemistry Unbound project goes beyond general chemistry to organize an entire undergraduate chemistry curriculum around the four CLUE DCIs and the eight Framework SEPs. Work that incorporates “badging” strategies to assess chemistry laboratory skills − leverages ECD for the development of tasks that elicit evidence of student mastery of particular laboratory techniques.…”

Structural determination of model phospholipid membranes by Raman spectroscopy: Laboratory experiment

“…[1][2][3][4] A wellstructured interdisciplinary curriculum promotes student understanding of how different disciplines integrate with one another to help address complex and unique interdisciplinary problems. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Accordingly, the number of STEM courses and laboratory experiments designed to integrate multiple disciplines is increasing. [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] For example, the fields of biochemistry and molecular biophysics are inherently interdisciplinary in nature, and their principles encompass many concepts from biology, chemistry, and physics.…”