Just Inquire: A Weekly Homework Assignment Helping Students Make Connections between Chemistry and Everyday Life

The disconnect between real-world applications of science and what is traditionally taught in science classrooms is a known issue. If students do not understand the point of the science they are learning, it is more difficult to see themselves as scientists in this field. Homework assignments are one way to help bridge this disconnect. Here we describe the design and implementation of a simple weekly homework assignment to help students recognize chemistry as a phenomenon happening in the world around them, beyond the classroom. In the assignment, students were asked weekly “How have you observed chemistry outside of class this week?” The assignment was successfully implemented in first semester General Chemistry at two institutions. Institution 1 was a private college with a significantly different demographic background of students compared to Institution 2, a public Hispanic Serving Institution. We evaluated the assignment using a pre- and post-survey and statistically analyzed the results. In the post-survey at both institutions, the number of students who identified chemistry as a phenomenon that they witnessed within the last week outside of the classroom increased. The change in percentage for this number was meaningfully larger for the students at Institution 2. These data suggest that institutional context and possibly students prior experience in STEM may play a role in the differential impact of the assignment. Our findings show that the implementation of this assignment helped students identify chemistry as a phenomenon happening outside of the classroom.