Term has started and so has the Environmental Chemistry course that I have been designing during the last few months. The official name is CHEM 298 — Air, water and soil processes and targeted at students, who have at least completed the first of 3 analytical chemistry courses (who have a good knowledge of aqueous phase equilibria in addition to a solid General Chemistry knowledge).<\/p>\n
We do a tour of atmospheric, water and soil chemistry followed by interfacial processes and the analytical tools necessary to monitor concentrations and transfer between environmental compartments.<\/p>\n
I have quite a few students, who are really interested in the topic with some engaging discussions, quite early in the course. During a brainstorming exercise\u00a0students have come up with a range of interesting topics that I will try address during the course.<\/p>\n
For the term paper and group presentation (which are part of the assessment together with quizzes and a late midterm exam), I have invited the Science Librarian to give a presentation on search strategies, relevant databases and on how to structure search results. Together with peer review sessions of the paper outline (4 weeks into the term) and a draft (2 weeks before the end of term) it should ease students into term paper writing — for all students taking the course it is the first time that they are writing a term paper!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Term has started and so has the Environmental Chemistry course that I have been designing during the last few months. The official name is CHEM 298 — Air, water and soil processes and targeted at students, who have at least completed the first of 3 analytical chemistry courses (who have a good knowledge of aqueous … Continue reading A new Environmental Chemistry course<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1866"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1885,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions\/1885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.nomad.priv.at\/researchblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}