Chapter 4 – STEM: Teaching practical analytical chemistry online: improving delivery of a Year 2 NMR Spectroscopy Practical
Dr Cate Cropper and Professor Gita Sedghi
Abstract
Practical analytical skills, including processing and analysing spectroscopic data, are vital skills for many scientists, often developed during undergraduate laboratory-based modules. During the Covid-19 lockdown, student access to labs was prohibited, but we were able to use remote access to spectrometers and other specialist software to deliver practical work online. In addition, we successfully created the community and collegiality of lab-based courses by offering improved access to demonstrators, academic staff, and their peers during synchronous online lab sessions. This chapter will discuss the logistics of setting up an analytical chemistry virtual experiment, unexpected improvements to students’ experience and writeups, and how we provided bespoke feedback sessions to each student.
Background
Acquisition of practical analytical skills is a core component of chemistry degree programmes (Salzer et al., 2005). These skills include operation of instrumentation, appropriate processing, and elucidation of spectra. To gain these skills, chemistry undergraduates need to familiarise themselves with instrument software. Chemistry students at the University of Liverpool (UoL) study analytical skills throughout their degree programmes in a variety of ways, from learning background theory in lecture-based courses, to hands-on experience in the laboratory throughout their degree. Practical skills include operation of instrumentation, appropriate processing, and elucidation of spectra. To gain these skills, chemistry undergraduates need to familiarise themselves with instrument software. This chapter focuses on this skill acquisition, taught to year 2 students in their second semester analytical chemistry lab course and its online delivery during the pandemic (Sorto et al., 2020). This is a laboratory-based module in which students practise a range of measurement techniques appropriate for the investigation of a wide range of chemical phenomena spanning thermodynamics, kinetics, spectroscopy, electrochemistry, surface science and transition metal chemistry. In one of these experiments, students learn how to acquire, process, simulate and analyse spectra using Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Part of the learning outcome of this experiment is for students to think critically about their collected data. Students are expected to ask themselves; How can the presentation of the data be improved by adjusting the processing parameters? Is my data of a suitable standard for simulations to be performed? Can I unambiguously assign the data – can I see all the information in my spectra? This method of inspection can be applied to the analysis and evaluation of any data type and our aim is for students to recognise what good data looks like.
Pre-Covid-19, this experiment compri