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10.1021/ed800110f Published on Web 03/09/2010

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A Chemical Instrumentation Game for TeachingCritical Thinking and Information Literacy inInstrumental Analysis CoursesDavid E. HendersonDepartment of Chemistry, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut 06106david.henderson@trincoll.edu

Instrumental analysis courses seek to introduce students tothe latest developments in chemical instrumentation and to helpthem learn to use the chemical literature to stay current in thefield. Various approaches for involving students with the litera-ture in fourth-year seminars and advanced courses have beentried (1), but often students simply summarize one or a fewpapers chosen with little thought. Project laboratories (2) inwhich students select the instruments or protocols for a specificanalysis have long been an important component of analyticalchemistry courses (3-6). The limitation of project laboratoriesfor finding cutting-edge instrumentation is that standard meth-ods often take a long time to mature and a focus on solving aspecific problem will lead students to existing methods ratherthan new instruments.

The Chemical Instrumentation Game (CIG) was developedto address the perceived deficiency of existing pedagogy forstudents to identify the most recent advancements in instru-mentation that were not yet in textbooks or standard methods.The CIG is one component of an upper-level undergraduateinstrumental analysis course for chemistry and biochemistrymajors. It typically involves part or all of four class meetingsduring the semester depending on class size. The CIG addsa competitive element to the literature search process thatencourages a higher level of critical thinking in evaluating thejournal literature. The instrumental analysis course also includescollaborative activities including a semester-long group projectthat requires evaluation of various methods to solve specificanalysis problems (2). The CIG has been successfully used forseveral years by three different facultymembers and with class sizesfrom 4 to 16 students. Larger classes could easily be accommodatedby grouping students. This approach can be adapted to otherchemistry courses that wish to focus on current literature.

Simulation games have been widely used as pedagogy toincrease student engagement (7, 8). Over the past decade, the useof simulation games has found growing application in teachinggeneral education courses through the highly successful Reactingto the Past (RTTP) pedagogy developed by Mark Carnes andnow used at over 200 colleges and universities (9). RTTP courseshave been shown to increase student engagement with materialand enhance writing and oral presentation skills (10). A detailedassessment of the impact of this pedagogy in general educationhas been published (11). The CIG grew out of experience usingthe RTTP pedagogy. Although it lacks some of the elements ofthe former game, it has been found to provide a similar level ofmotivation and engagement.

The CIG involves students in direct competition with eachother, and this competition can be structured either betweenindividual students or small groups. In the RTTP pedagogy, smallgroups are normally competing with each other, providing bothcollaborative and competitive elements. In small classes, the competi-tion canbe directly between individual students.The course inwhichCIG has been used involvesmany elements of student collaboration.Students work in pairs on lab experiments and groups of 2-4students collaborate on a course-long researchproject that culminatesin a 3-4 week independent lab project. In this environment, it wasfelt that direct competition between individual students was appro-priate. However, in courses lacking strong collaborative experience,the CIG could be used as a competition between groups of students.Experience within the RTTP consortium at over 200 institutionshas shown that competitive elements have a powerful ability tomotivate students, even when the stakes in winning are low.

Game Details

The CIG is a simulation of the process of identifying newinstruments for commercialization. Each student is assigned therole of senior vice president (VP) at Thermo Fisher Scientific,Inc. Thermo began acquiringmajor instrument companies in the1990s and has become the major player in the chemicalinstrumentation business. Because most of this growth has beenthrough the acquisition of other companies, the simulationrepresents a realistic scenario. The instructor acts as CEO andprovides feedback to the VPs throughout the game.

The game sessions consist of a series of class meetings inwhich the VPs (the students) present information on cutting-edge technologies in particular fields. Typical examples areshown in Table 1. The schedule for these presentations is basedon the order of presentation of topics in the course. Each majortopic culminates in a game session at which the assigned studentspresent their proposals for that technique, for example, massspectrometry. Students are assigned to topics in a randomdrawing. Depending on class size, each student will do one ormore presentations. The student's goal is to survey the currentliterature, including recent professional meetings such as thePittsburgh Conference, and identify what he or she feels is themost important new instrument concept or product in thespecific area. Students post their ideas on the course BlackBoardsite as soon as they find it to stake their claim. Students submit anannotated bibliography of their literature search for evaluationwith their proposal. Each student prepares a short presentation,

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typically 10 min, to explain the instrument they want to acquirefor Thermo. They must then convince their peers to invest intheir idea and convince the CEO (instructor) that they havedone a thorough evaluation of the cutting-edge literature in thefield. The oral presentation must cover all of the following:

1. What technology is being recommended, what scientific princi-ples are involved, and what are its applications? How is it novel?

2. What is the market potential? Is this something that will bebought byonly a fewmajor research centers orwill bewidely used?

3. Who are the leading researchers in the emerging field andwheredo they work? (Students should not contact them, but shouldknow how that would be done should the CEO wish to retainthem as consultants.)

4. Explain in detail the significance of a selected journal articlerelated to the proposal, including some details of what wasdone, why it is significant to the field, and why it might lead togrowth potential within the instrument business.

5. Who are the major suppliers of instrumentation in the field,their size in terms of market price?

In addition to their oral presentation, students hand in anannotated bibliography of at least five important recent articlesrelevant to their proposal. The bibliography is graded andprovides evidence of the extent of each student's literature search.The students also prepare a one page statement (double spaced)that will include the following:

• What company or technology do they want to invest in?• What company or researcher owns the patent or is the leadresearcher for this idea?

• If the technology is owned by a public company, what is thevalue of the company?

• If the technology was developed in an academic lab, who is thelead researcher?

During each class session of the CIG, the assigned students,typically 3-5, make their oral presentations. These may be done

using PowerPoint or may be less formal, depending on thetechnology available and the desire of the students. Each studentmakes a specific proposal for Thermo to invest in his or herchosen area. The rest of the class and the instructor question eachpresenter about his or her proposal after the presentation.Questions from the instructor should ensure that any funda-mental flaws in the assertions of the presenters are exposed. Thecompetitive nature of the activity leads students to ask criticalquestions of their competition and to seek clarification of pointsthey did not understand. After all presentations, the students notmaking presentations vote on where Thermo should invest. Thisis done on signed ballots that are seen only by the instructor. EachVP controls $10 million in investment capital for each session toinvest in other VPs projects. At the end of each game session, theinstructor collects the investment documents and distributes theoutcome in terms of total investment in each proposal to the classby email. An overall evaluation of the potential success of theprojects proposed should also be discussed along with suggestionson presentation skills.

Observations of Student Performance

In evaluating the CIG student proposals, a spreadsheet wasused to tabulate the investments by each student and for eachproposed project. Whereas most top students in the course didwell in the CIG, some average students did their best work in thecourse in this activity. They found exceptionally good literatureand their grade for this part of the course was higher than that onexams, lab reports, or research papers. Other students who didexcellent work on exams found it difficult to make criticalevaluations. This is due to the different set of skills involved inthe CIG from writing lab reports and taking exams. Thus, theCIG provides a useful measure of important critical thinkingskills that are hard to measure in more traditional metrics.

The spreadsheet also suggests which students made themostcritical evaluations of the presentations, as noted by small

Table 1. Typical List of Presentation Topics

Topic Possible Techniques To Explore

Mass spectrometry (Thermo owns Finnegan inthis market.)

• Should we buy a company in the MALDI-TOF markets?• Are there other emerging applications such as proteomics or genomics in which we shouldinvest?• What about clinical applications?• Are there new technologies for sample introduction, separation, or detection that we shouldacquire?• What about portable instruments or devices for national security applications?• What about DART and DESI?

Voltammetery and electrochemical sensors(Thermo owns Orion in this market.)

• What are the cutting-edge applications?• Is there room for growth in the field?• Are there important clinical or environmental applications that may make this a profitablesector in which to invest?• This topic can include sensors such as the “chemical nose” and devices for explosivedetection as well as more traditional electrochemical devices.

NMR spectroscopy (Thermo has no product inthis market.)

• Solid-state NMR• Magnetic resonance imaging• Very high-field instrumentsInterfaced HPLC-NMR are some areas you should explore. There may be others. Whatabout miniature or portable instruments? Thermo is not established in the market. Should weinvest?

X-ray and Surface Analysis (Thermo has aline of X-ray analysis products.)

• What are modern applications?• What technique is most frequently used?• Are X-ray, Raman, or STM/AFM applications most promising?

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investments in some projects and large investments in others.Extra credit points were given to the student with the highestinvestment in his or her project and to the student who showedthe most critical judgment in evaluating other projects. Datafrom several classes indicate that students prefer to split theirinvestments rather evenly if they are not making really criticaldecisions about the techniques and that as they become morecritical in their thinking, the range of their investments inspecific projects increases. One way to evaluate this is to computethe standard deviation of the investments of each student.Students who are dividing their investments equally among allpresenters will have very small standard deviation for theirinvestments. Students making the most critical decisions willtend to invest heavily in a few instruments and have little or noinvestment in the weaker proposals. This leads to a large rangeand standard deviation in their investments. It is important thatthe faculty member is involved in questioning each presenter toensure that any fundamental flaws in their logic are revealed sothat student investments are based on accurate understanding.The faculty member can also keep notes on the quality ofquestions asked by students during the discussion. At the endof the game, the CEO should announce which projects have beenfunded and possibly promote the student who has been mostcritical in evaluating their peers to President. This provides anopportunity to discuss the importance of critical evaluation.

The simulation game motivated each student to gain asmuch investment in their projects through convincing presenta-tions and by selecting important applications. However, gradesfor the activity were based on the instructor's evaluation of thestudent's presentation and the annotated bibliography andwritten statement. Only a small increment of the grade wasbased on the quantity of investment acquired by each student.

Accessing Literature Resources for the Game

Library resources for students will vary from institution toinstitution. Some important resources for students are instru-ment company Web sites, the Pittsburgh Conference Web site,and the Analytical Sciences Digital Library (12). These Weblinks can be provided to students on a course Web site. Studentsat this institution have access to both STNEasy and the ACSJournal Archive. To aid students in using these resources, aPowerPoint presentation on literature searching using STNEasy,the ACS Journal Archive, and the Business Resource Center wasprepared and used in the class. This presentation was preparedwith the expectation that it would also be made available for useby students in other courses as well. To this end, a narration wasrecorded to accompany most slides that students can access asthey watch the presentation. Furthermore, notes were providedon most pages. This presentation is, therefore, a stand aloneproduct. Periodic changes in the Web interface of the localcollege library, STNEasy, and the ACS Journal Archive requireperiodic updates to this presentation. This presentation isavailable online (13) as an example that can be modified withscreen shots for local conditions.

Conclusions

This activity replaces a journal activity in which studentstypically just grabbed the first article they found or in some caseswere given a list of “important” articles to prevent their bringing

in trivial material for the discussion. In the former activity,students also paid little attention to other student's presenta-tions. By setting this activity as a competitive game with apremium placed on finding current and promising techniques,students are encouraged to not only search the literature but toevaluate it and make judgments. Students tend to evaluatemultiple possible techniques before they settle on one to pursue,providing the first aspect of critical thinking. These judgmentsinclude considering the impact of a new device based onpotential market, the improvement it offers over existingmethods, and the importance of the analysis it allows. Forexample, in 2003, students placed a high value on techniquesthat would improve screening for explosives and a low value on arevolutionary technique that would probably only sell a fewinstruments worldwide because of its narrow application. Thesecond aspect of critical thinking occurs as the students developtheir arguments to convince the rest of the class that theirtechnique is the best. This requires reading the literature butalso thinking about markets and general needs for analysis. Thecompetitive nature of the activity gives each student an incentiveto find an interesting topic and to convince his or her fellowstudents that he or she has found the best article and technique.The third aspect of critical thinking occurs in the studentaudience. The students must consider the various advantagesof each proposal. Students often aggressively question each otherand challenge their judgment during the discussion. The pre-sence of the faculty voice in this discussion is important to ensurethat misunderstandings are corrected. The students make theirfinal evaluations of each proposal when they “vote” at the end ofclass by investing some of their resources in the techniques theyfeel are most promising. The student handout used for the gameis provided in the supportingmaterial along with the PowerPointpresentation used to introduce literature searching.

The CIG has led to a much higher level of student interestand produced satisfying interactions. This approach could beadapted for use with other advanced courses by adjusting thescenario to focus on other aspects of the chemical literatureincluding new synthetic reagents or techniques in any field.

Acknowledgment

The CIG was developed with the support of the MellonFoundation and the help of Ann Marie Krupski, Jennifer vanSickle, and Mike Williams. The suggestions of Janet Morrisonand William Church who have used the game are also acknow-ledged.

Literature Cited

1. Bowyer, W. J.; Kaydos, J. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1997, 74, 184–185.

2. Henderson, D. E. Problem Solving in Analytical Chemistry. InInnovations in College Science Teaching; Penick, J. E., Dunkhase,J. A., Eds.; Society for College Science Teachers: Washington,DC, 1988; pp 53-58.

3. Settle, F. A. J. Chem. Educ. 1979, 56, 411–412.4. Settle, F. A.; Pleva, M. A. Chem. Tech. 1982, 12, 444–448.5. Wenzel, T. J. Collaborative and Project-based Learning in Analy-

tical Chemistry. In Active Learning: Models from the AnalyticalSciences; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2007;pp 54-68.

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6. Wenzel, T. J. Cooperative Learning and Project-based Laboratoriesas a Way to Broaden Learning Outcomes. In Developing andSustaining a Research-Supportive Curriculum: A Compendium ofSuccessful Practices; Council on Undergraduate Research: Wa-shington, DC, 2007; pp 21-39.

7. Greenblat, C. S.Designing Games and Simulations; Sage: NewburyPark, CA, 1988.

8. King, B. T.; Janis, I. L. Human Relations 1956, 9, 177–186.9. Reacting to the Past Home Page. http://www.barnard.edu/

reacting/index.html (accessed Jan 2010).10. Carnes, M. C. Change 2005, 37, 6–11.

11. Stroessner, S. J.; Susser-Beckerman, L.;Whittaker, A. J. Educ. Psych.2009, 101, 605–620.

12. Analytical Sciences Digital Library Home Page. http://asdlib.org/(accessed Jan 2010).

13. A PowerPoint presentation for literature searching. http://www.trincoll.edu/∼henderso/textfi∼1/analch∼1.htm (accessed Jan 2010).

Supporting Information Available

Student handout; student ballot for voting. This material isavailable via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org.