SIX DEGREES OF CHEM & BACON

Abstract

Some courses are just not of interest to some students but are nonetheless important to their education as engineers. First-year chemistry for engineers has been shown to be one such course; student exit surveys at graduation indicate that students from some programs didn’t see how the course connected to their program or into their careers as engineers [1]. Gamification is a popular technique where game elements, like point systems, are integrated into a course structure to motivate student learning and participation [2]. In the offering of this first-year chemistry course in the summer of 2019, the instructor applied gamification techniques in the course design. The major changes to the course structure included the ability to “unlock” an alternate grading scheme if at least five of seven tasks were completed, at least three of which were the completion of a “Six Degrees of Chem & Bacon” challenge. These challenges required the students to think about a core topic in the course module and find a practical application from their discipline of engineering. The experiences of the instructor and a student in the Spring 2019 class are shared here. The big take-aways are 1) to consider the benefits of reflection in learning, and 2) to consider the workload, both of the students and of the teaching team, when adding this type of activity to a course.