4th EucheMs chemistry congress

wednesday, 29-Aug 2012
s628
chem. Listy 106, s587–s1425 (2012)
Education and History, Professional chemists Ethics, Employability, labels
Education in Chemistry – i
o - 2 7 4
CheMiCAL, Life And environMentAL SCienCeS
Meet BuSineSS ethiCS, CorPorAte SoCiAL
reSPonSiBiLity: An inteGrAted APProACh And
PerSPeCtive ShAPeS An entire univerSity
S. fränzLe 1 , A. LÖhr 2 , o. tettenBorn 3
1 Internationales Hochschulinstitut, Bio- and Environm.
Sciences, Zittau, Germany
2 Internationales Hochschulinstitut, Social Sciences, Zittau,
Germany
3 Internationales Hochschulinstitut, Public Affirs spokesman of
IHI, Zittau, Germany
IHI Zittau is dedicated to academic research, studies, and
cross-regional cooperation providing an intercultural focus for
(graduate) students from nearby Cz/D/PL border triangle, and
elsewhere abroad. This implies intercultural education and intense
foreign language training. E.g., students of project management
are made aware of their sphere of responsibility (influence)
and thus to keep environmental and social standards
during production. On various levels, (MSc/MA/MBA, PhD,
Habilitation), we strive to educate responsibly acting
professionals, in turn confronting students of life sciences with
ethical and economic drawbacks.
What kind of ethics do we talk about? If ethics, ethical and
responsible behavior, including issues of scientific integrity, were
taught just in an abstract principle-based approach one would
spread vague ideas and probably disappointment among students:
rather than considering ethics an integral part of their professional
life, this would be perceived as an demand put exogenously on
them by principles remote from their own personal and
professional situation. The students hence are expected to regard
ethical criteria and demands from other spheres while subjected
to professional tasks in their particular business.
Practically this integrative approach is pursued by
cooperation with real enterprises and other organizations. There,
outside our rooms and labs, most of our MSc/MA and PhD theses
are prepared, and there a graduate or postgrad gets familiar with
“real-life” problems, including ethically relevant drawbacks such
as environmental damages due to possible scale-up of their
approaches and innovations.
Philosophically, this goes in line with modern concepts of
ethics, particular dialogue ethics, which rest on three pillars of
modern philosophy, i.e. (a) the linguistic turn, (b) practical turn,
and (c) cultural turn. In sum, the cultural-based approach to ethics
means that students have to develop a practical (chemical,
economic, etc.) professional culture rather than learning
theoretical principles.
Keywords: ethics; transdisciplinary education; scientific and
enterprise responsibility;
Education in Chemistry – i
4 th EucheMs chemistry congress
o - 2 7 5
ASSeSSMent of toPiCS deeMed reLevAnt in A
nurSinG CheMiStry CourSe
C. e. Brown 1 , J. BArBerA 1 , M. L. M. henry 2 ,
r. M. hySLoP 3
1 University of Northern Colorado, Chemistry and Biochemistry,
Greeley, USA
2 University of Northern Colorado, School of Nursing, Greeley,
USA
3 University of Northern Colorado, Department of Chemistry
and Biochemistry, Greeley, USA
This two-stage study focused on the undergraduate nursing
course that covers topics in general, organic, and biological
(GOB) chemistry. In the first stage, the central objective was to
identify the main concepts of GOB chemistry relevant to the
clinical practice of nursing. The collection of data was based on
open-ended interviews of both nursing and chemistry teaching
faculty as well as practicing nurses. From the resulting interviews,
three themes emerged: topics that are Important – have a direct
application in the nursing clinical practice; topics that are
Foundational – are not directly important for the nursing clinical
practice but facilitate the understanding of the important topics;
and topics that are Not Important – do not have a direct application
or are not significant in the nursing clinical practice. Utilizing the
data collected, a list of clinically relevant chemistry concepts was
developed. The resulting list was then evaluated by nursing and
chemistry faculty at the national level.
The second stage involved the design and development of
an assessment in the form of a concept inventory. The General,
Organic, and Biological Chemistry Concept Inventory
(GOB-CCI) is a 47 item multiple-choice instrument designed to
assess students’ conceptual understanding of the main chemistry
concepts identified as essential in clinical nursing practice. Items
for this instrument are based on the most relevant concepts as
identified in the first stage of the research. In producing the current
version of the instrument, data from a large-scale (n~600) pilot
study was used to evaluate and edit each item. A psychometric
analysis performed on the data was used to evaluate validity,
reliability and item statistics. It is hoped that data from this
instrument will facilitate the assessment of the GOB chemistry
curriculum and courses as well as providing chemistry instructors
a better understanding of the difficulties their nursing students
have in chemistry.
AUGUst 26–30, 2012, PrAGUE, cZEcH rEPUbLIc