An Organic Chemistry Laboratory Exercise In Information Literacy Using Scifinder

Eric Helms

Dept. Of Chemistry22nd Biennial Conference On

Chemical Education

Bonnie Swoger

Milne Library22nd Biennial Conference on

Chemical Education

WHY DID WE DEVELOP THIS EXERCISE?• ACS CPT Guidelines for Chemical Information:

o "A student ... should know how to use the chemical literature effectively and efficiently. [I]nstruction in chemical information skills must now acknowledge the dominance of online resources and provide access and instruction in those resources."

• Local desire

THREE MAIN LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1. Students will use SciFinder to find chemical data

2. Students will understand the differences between three major types of chemical literature (primary research articles, review articles and news stories) and how each can be used.

3. Students will effectively use SciFinder to find literature on chemical topics.

AUDIENCE

• Primarily Biology, Chemistry, Biochemistry majors - 491 over the last four semesterso Also pre-health sciences in other majors

• Reaching the students we want to reach in a class that they all need to take, and we can do so in a smaller group

LOGISTICS• Dedicated chemistry computer lab reserved for the week

of the lab• Training log-ins and student registration

• Recent changes have made this easier• Student laptop requirement• Close collaboration between multiple librarians,

chemistry faculty• LMS group, meetings

EXERCISE - PRELAB1. Lab manual reading about the nature of peer review

and the scientific literatureo A Very Brief Introduction to the Scientific Literature

1. Locate examples from the chemical literature and answer some questionso Authors, organization, primary vs. secondary

1. Register for SciFinder

IN CLASS EXERCISE• Three main parts,

focusing our our three learning objectives

o Finding chemical datao The nature of the

chemical literatureo Finding chemical

literature

• Is there more than one entry for the melting point? (circle one) YES NOo Why?

Chemical Data

NATURE OF THE CHEMICAL LITERATURE

• Discussion of the pre-lab assignmento Authors, organization, primary vs. secondary

• In class: o "Working with your group, select which

factors are the most important in helping YOU distinguish between the different types of scientific literature you examined. List the three most important factors below."

FINDING CHEMICAL LITERATURE• SciFinder natural language interface

o Compare two searches: “polymerization of ethylene oxide” “polymerization and ethylene oxide”

o Of the two searches you did above, which of the two search statements would help you find the most relevant results? Why?

• Open ended question:o Find one journal article (primary research articles or review

articles) that contain an example of a Friedel-Crafts alkylation reaction. Linked to topics covered in lecture Article and reaction information

ASSESSMENT - LOGISTICS

• Students must complete a survey to get one of the answers required on their lab worksheet.

• Google forms allows us to collect data across all lab sections

• Open ended questions

ASSESSMENT - RESULTS• 88.6% of students were able to correctly identify a

primary research article (Nature letter)• Students were asked to list the ways to search for

chemical information: 2.28/3 o Students most likely to miss structure searchingo Changes to SciFinder will make this easier to do in

class next semester• 26% of students learned about some aspect of

search strategy: natural language, filters, etc.

Link

STUDENT COMMENTSI never knew that there was a way to find basic chemical properties and then click a link that will take you to the original work in which that information was published.

Scifinder is way more specific than google.

'And' and 'of' will lead to different results.

I learned the clear difference between a primary research article and a review article and short cuts that help differentiate the two.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSLibrarians who deliver the exercise

• Justina Elmore• Tom Ottaviano• Michelle Costello

CHEM 216 students

Link