Way back in the distant past, when I was a fresh-faced young academic ready to inflict new and exciting things on undergraduates, I developed a scenario-based problem for use in our final year. Having found it years later, I now realise it was an early attempt at a Problem-based learning (PBL) scenario, before this method of teaching had really received much exposure in Higher Education in the UK. PBL essentially gives students an open-ended problem space to explore and develop. Properly run, “facilitators” guide students through the process of thinking through a problem (mostly by doing the two-year-old trick of repeatedly asking “Why?” to every undergraduate response/question, but in a slightly more sophisticated fashion). Students then proceed along a natural investigation path to solve the problem, or at least come up with a really good go at it (as there may be no actual solution in the traditional sense).
Fairly quickly in my career, I ended up meeting Tina Overton, who is an excellent practitioner of this method, and I can highly recommend to anyone teaching undergraduate chemistry, especially analytical chemistry, many of her PBL resources. They are well thought through, and evaluated for success with students. In a future post, I will hopefully describe our adaptation of the scenario “New Drugs for Old” for the local climate: “Dragon’s Den”. As part of our first year programme, the course containing this scenario has been so successful and popular that we have had to cap our entry numbers!
But for now, and for those who are interested, I figured I should make available my original work for adaptation for those who are interested. Please take it with the caveat that it was developed many years ago …
Students are given a variety of materials to start with. This includes:
- An advertisement for BBC Chemical Historian
- An email from the director of Chemical Archeology
- A news clipping from the local paper
- A hand-written letter from Chris Ewans (the Hero of the piece) to his wife, describing the plague in more graphic detail, including the key facts that it attacks bone (jellifying its victims) and causes skin lesions. Unfortunately, I’ve lost the original, but it’s a good place to start an adaption if you want to use the material.
The overall scenario is then presented to students is as follows:
“You and two/three friends have just taken up positions as chemical historians working for BBC television. Your aim: To do some detective work and discover how Chris Ewans saved his crew in 2006. You have all the information that you need to create the TV show – to be historically accurate may be a little more difficult. Your boss wants you to produce a small preliminary show that details how Chris worked out what sort of drug was required, how he would have gone about firstly designing it and synthesising it (this should include a moderately detailed synthetic scheme, but be careful to try and be as chemically accurate as possible – other scientists will be watching your show), a few descriptors on chemical technology of the time that Chris may have used, including some diagrams/schematics of apparatus, and finally discuss how he might have tested his compound.
Remember that you only have sketchy information. You need to make a story that is plausible that others will understand, is consistent with the facts, and fits your supervisors requirements.
You will have to present your groups findings to a group of other teams working in the area for comment.”
I had prepared a guide for facilitators/coordinators, but it is very brief.
I’d be interested if anyone finds this material useful and especially if you adapt it for your own purposes.
