The State of Green Chemistry Instruction at Canadian Universities

Abstract

This chapter summarizes some of the important green chemistry teaching initiatives currently in place at the Canadian post-secondary education level. It presents examples taken from several Canadian universities currently offering undergraduate courses and/or laboratory instruction involving green principles. Relevant syllabi are compared and contrasted to provide a perspective on what is being taught and how, along with materials published by authors at Canadian institutions in the field of green chemistry education. Student and instructor feedback is additionally provided as appropriate. Potential future directions in green chemistry are also discussed.

Student-Generated Infographics for Learning Green Chemistry and Developing Professional Skills

“…At the national level, a collaboration between Beyond Benign and the ACS Green Chemistry Institute has led to the Green & Sustainable Chemistry Education Module Development Project, which is currently developing green and sustainable chemistry education resources for general and organic chemistry . Finally, at the global level, organizations such as the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) promote the integration of green chemistry into education, with many countries such as Brazil, , Canada, China, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Russia, Spain, and Thailand joining the effort. Adding to these broad-based endeavors to integrate green chemistry, we have developed a method of incorporating green chemistry during remote instruction using student-generated infographics.…”

What's in a word? Student beliefs and understanding about green chemistry

“…It is important to document the outcomes, both expected and unexpected, from green chemistry courses to ensure the goals of the curricula are being met. Assessment not only informs and improves the development of new curricula (e.g., Marteel-Parrish, 2014;Andraos and Dicks, 2015;Garner et al, 2015;Paluri et al, 2015), but also provides support for sustained support of these courses.…”

“…Self-assessment of knowledge is often not a reliable measure of cognitive learning (Davis et al, 2006;von Blottnitz et al, 2015) and instead provides a measure of affective components (Sitzmann et al, 2010). Some researchers (e.g., Galgano et al, 2012;Gron et al, 2013;Marteel-Parrish, 2014;Andraos and Dicks, 2015) have used student course work to explore student outcomes, while others have used interviews and focus groups to provide a more holistic picture of student understanding (Mandler et al, 2012;Karpudewan et al, 2015aKarpudewan et al, , 2015bShamuganathan and Karpudewan, 2017), but these are time intensive to conduct and analyze and thus, can often only be used with a small number of students.…”

Active Learning Strategies in the Environmental Engineering Course: A Case Study at Curtin University Malaysia

“…Several engineering and science academic institutions in many countries have implemented green chemistry/engineering as a main topic in their core program of undergraduate or a postgraduate course. Besides that a lot of funding has been invested in green chemistry research and training in many countries (Andraos & Dicks, 2015;Armstrong et al, 2018;Karpudewan et al, 2016;Rauch, 2015;Tarasova et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2018). Green Chemistry subject is applied to the course schedules at all levels, from secondary school, university and PhD school as well as professional training, and enlightenment of the general public.…”