Relating Chemistry to Healthcare and MORE: Implementation of MORE in a Survey Organic and Biochemistry Course for Prehealth Students

Schroeder, Lianne; Bierdz, Joshua; Wink, Donald J.; King, Maripat; Daubenmire, Patrick L.; Clark, Ginevra A.

doi:10.1021/acs.jchemed.7b00272

Cited by 11 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(72 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In each week of the 15 week course, students attend 2.5 h of lecture, 1 h of discussion with a TA, and a 3 h lab with a TA. The laboratory content for this course has been recently revised. − The population of students at this university is roughly 40% underrepresented minorities, with an average ACT score very close to the US average. While demographic information is not available for this student population, it is predominantly female.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urinalysis and Prenatal Health: Evaluation of a Simple Experiment That Connects Organic Functional Groups to Health Equity

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Knowledge of functional groups provides students with a language for organic chemistry. However, students in a health science chemistry course do not plan to be synthetic organic chemists and, therefore, need examples of how functional group chemistry is relevant to their vocational goals. We have developed a lab to demonstrate how simple functional group chemistry is used in laboratory testing, namely, the "pee test", or dipstick urinalysis. Dipstick urinalysis is frequently used to screen for various conditions and is used weekly in the last month of pregnancy. Our lab models the prenatal clinical environment. The laboratory allows for testing of chemical species that support a medical diagnosis: albumin testing for preeclampsia; leukocytes, nitrites, and pH for urinary tract infection; glucose, ketones, and pH to test for gestational diabetes, alcoholism, or other serious metabolic diseases. The related lessons are designed to support students in understanding the reactions involved in testing, biochemistry related to diagnosis, and general understandings of how tests are interpreted. In developing this experiment, we were confronted with disparities in prenatal care, namely, the absence of culturally competent care, inequitable access to care, and toxic stress due to racism that contribute to dramatically increased maternal death rates for women of color in the US. We identified resources to educate students on culturally competent care. These resources include reference to the way in which the "pee test" is administered. We have incorporated this resource into our lab with appropriate reflection questions, based on our newly devised cultural competence and social justice framework for chemistry students. Our findings indicated that student understandings of the chemistry and testing methods were adequate; on average, 77% of samples were properly diagnosed. With respect to social justice and cultural competence, we found that students predominantly discussed two elements of the cultural competence and social justice framework: reflection on privilege in society and agency to promote equity in healthcare.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urinalysis and Prenatal Health: Evaluation of a Simple Experiment That Connects Organic Functional Groups to Health Equity

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The analogous series of straight chain alcohols used in this experiment is substantially less hazardous than other classes of organic molecules that could be used to experimentally demonstrate the impact of molecular structure on physical properties. Unlike many existing experiments designed to teach students about the relationship between molecular structure and boiling point, , this procedure does not involve boiling organic substances on the lab bench. It may be possible to further improve the safety of this procedure by replacing the n -hexane solvent with another less hazardous, nonpolar organic solvent that also does not dissolve Sharpie (or another pigment of interest).…”

Section: Experimental Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The use of active learning exercises in general chemistry courses significantly increases student scores and narrows achievement gaps for students from less advantaged educational backgrounds . A variety of active learning exercises have been developed to help students understand the impact of molecular structure and polarity on physical properties such as solubility, , vapor pressure, melting point, boiling point, ,,, and the intermolecular forces present between molecules. − Students who are taught laboratory classes using inquiry-based teaching approaches develop better understanding of course topics, perform better in chemistry lecture courses, and develop better critical thinking skills , than those taught in traditional teaching laboratories. To the best of our knowledge, no one has developed an inquiry-based laboratory experiment to help general chemistry students learn about the relationships between molecular structure/polarity, solubility, and intermolecular forces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Student Discovery of the Relationship between Molecular Structure, Solubility, and Intermolecular Forces

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

General chemistry students need to understand the concept of intermolecular forces and use them to predict the properties of materials. To do this, they must create symbolic representations of molecules, relate these to physical observations, and explain them using submicroscopic theoretical constructs. When these concepts are taught separately, students lack the context to fully understand and retain them. In this inquiry-based laboratory experiment, students explored the interrelated concepts of molecular structure and solubility in an applied context and then explained their individual results and the class results using the concept of intermolecular forces. Specifically, they drew the molecular structures of an analogous series of alcohol molecules and evaluated the relative solubility of the alcohols in polar versus nonpolar solvents. Designing the procedure to avoid student exposure to hazardous reagents facilitated their exploration of the underlying concepts. Using Sharpie pigment in each alcohol as an indicator dye helped the students visually assess their relative solubility in different solvents. Students typically observed that the relative solubility of the alcohols in the solvents could be predicted based on key factors that affect molecular polarity and hydrophobicity, in particular hydrocarbon chain length and surface-to-volume ratios. The students explained the pooled class solubility results based on the types and strengths of intermolecular forces present in each substance. Significance testing performed on our pre-and postlaboratory quiz data indicate that completing this experiment significantly improved students' conceptual understanding of structure−property relationships. Item difficulty and discrimination index scores were used to validate these quiz questions.

show abstract

“…The MORE pedagogy is embedded in a constructivist framework. 18 We have previously used MORE to develop laboratories exploring protein folding, 17 dialysis, 19 and drug absorption, 20 or in revision of traditional laboratories. 20 We used the Johnstone triangle, which describes the molecular, symbolic, and macroscopic levels of representation to frame our work.…”

Section: ■ Background and Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…18 We have previously used MORE to develop laboratories exploring protein folding, 17 dialysis, 19 and drug absorption, 20 or in revision of traditional laboratories. 20 We used the Johnstone triangle, which describes the molecular, symbolic, and macroscopic levels of representation to frame our work. 3 In general, the macroscopic vertex of the Johnstone triangle encompasses elements that are observable with human senses.…”

Section: ■ Background and Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Acids and Bases MORE Basic: Supporting Students’ Conceptualization of Acid–Base Chemistry through a Laboratory Exercise That Connects Molecular-Level Representations to Symbolic Representations and Experimentally Derived Evidence

2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Acid–base chemistry is an important and challenging topic for virtually all chemistry students. Recent works have focused on conceptually linking molecular and symbolic representations to experimental evidence for many chemical concepts. In this work we describe a laboratory exercise designed to address students’ conceptual challenges regarding acid–base chemistry, particularly with respect to organic acids, titrations, and pK a’s. This work is part of a series of laboratory exercises developed for prehealth students using the MORE (model, observe, reflect, explain) pedagogy. In this lab, students titrated an amino acid with sodium hydroxide according to lab procedures typically used in a prehealth lab. Our work differs from traditional laboratories in the emphasis on connecting molecular-level representations to symbolic representations and experimentally derived evidence. Using this course environment, we sought to understand the ways in which students’ understandings (molecular-level, symbolic, or evidential) are coconstructed or discrete. We further sought to guide students toward connecting these understandings and report on our successes and areas for improvement.

show abstract

Relating Chemistry to Healthcare and MORE: Implementation of MORE in a Survey Organic and Biochemistry Course for Prehealth Students

Cited by 11 publications

References 23 publications

Urinalysis and Prenatal Health: Evaluation of a Simple Experiment That Connects Organic Functional Groups to Health Equity

Urinalysis and Prenatal Health: Evaluation of a Simple Experiment That Connects Organic Functional Groups to Health Equity

Student Discovery of the Relationship between Molecular Structure, Solubility, and Intermolecular Forces

Making Acids and Bases MORE Basic: Supporting Students’ Conceptualization of Acid–Base Chemistry through a Laboratory Exercise That Connects Molecular-Level Representations to Symbolic Representations and Experimentally Derived Evidence

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About