1. Teaching Goals
Klaus Himmeldirk
April 13, 2015

2. What is your most important goal?
Help students to communicate their own ideas.
Celebrate diversity / empathy / understand what it is like to be different
Critical thinking and Professional Work
Contextualize and interpret; relate to tradition
Process information & examine practices in context.
Integrate information & apply it professionally.
Ability to think philosophically about topics that matter to students
Develop a better understanding of and respect for another culture; global citizens.
To become CRITICAL VISUAL PEOPLE
Scientific thinking and scientific process

3. What is critical thinking?
Ability to examine evidence w/out bias and come to a rational conclusion
When evidence is lacking, being able to argue for a plausible reconstruction.
Sustained reflection on/questioning of an issue using good reasoning
The ability to go below the surface of a text/idea/work of art and find something more informative/interesting.
Using the brain to imbibe, understand, synthesize information and through that process be changed
Systematically examine information in a manner that is supported by the facts/data
To ask questions based on contextualized information & the ability to see beyond black and white and appreciate the nuances; to recognize that there is no absolute truth
Moving beyond approaching material as just information but rather as ideas to evaluate and be in conversation with.
Exploring all sides and using them to create / adapt your own opinion
A train of thoughts based on a hypothesis.

4. What is the goal of teaching for me?
I coach students to widen their ability to interact with the world (of chemistry).

5. The Negative Image of Lab Classes
Boring: Labs are boring because students know ahead of time what the outcome of the experiments will be.
Irrelevant: Very little is taught that is relevant for the career of the students because most of our students are not chemistry majors.
Not challenging: Students often simply go through the motions without knowing what they are doing and why they are performing an experiment. They consider the lab essentially a waste of time and, therefore, invest a minimum of time.
Expensive: The maintenance of laboratories is very costly. The learning outcome in lab classes is too limited to justify the immense expenditures.
Inefficient: Knowledge is gained slower in lab classes than in lectures.
There is a lack of clarity about the goals and achievements of laboratory classes.
1 N.Reid, I.Shah, Chem. Educ. Res. Pract. 2007, 8, 172.

6. What will be lost if laboratory work vanishes?
Practical skills: handling of equipment, procedures, safety, risk,…
Transferable skills: team work, organization, communication, problem solving, observation,…
Intellectual stimulation: raising enthusiasm, esp. for “practical learners”
A deeper understanding of what science is, how knowledge is generated, and how trustworthy “facts” are.
A deeper understanding of the scientific method:
Problem, survey of current knowledge, hypothesis, search for observations that corroborate or refute the hypothesis (design of experiments), analysis and evaluation of data, publication, peer review,…
A deeper understanding of our own limits: Tolerance.