Here is a teaching method, that I initially started using in my “Environmental Chemistry” lecture. It is called “Paper of the Day” and starts out the lecture with a brief (10 min) presentation of a new and relevant research paper that is tightly connected to the following lecture’s content; e.g., a “global warming” paper for the start of the global warming chapter; one of the very new “Arctic ozone hole” papers, when discussing Arctic stratospheric chemistry… well you get the drift.
I have now expanded this to Analytical Chemistry and, especially, the Chromatography lab, using environmental, pharmaceutical, industrial and biochemical/medical applications to illustrate the usefulness of the content presented and provide relevance to students.
Also, students have approached me to discuss a paper (or sometimes even a general media article) several times and I am happy to leave the stage to them, providing context whenever needed.
