1. TEACHING SAFETY: 1000 STUDENTS AT A TIME Sheila Kennedy & John PalmerChemistry & Biochemistry University of California, San Diego
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4. the flow ANNOUNCEMENTS EXAM 2ND EXAM STUDY or REVIEW REVIEW CONTINUE WITH LAB CLASS WHINING & MOANING
5. SCHEDULE OF CLASSES ATTENDANCE AT THE FIRST LAB MEETING IS MANDATORYCheck the class web site for first-day information and come to lab prepared to work. Students who miss the first thirty minutes of the first lab meeting of the quarter will be administratively dropped from the course. LABORATORY SAFETY REQUIREMENTAll students in CHEM 6BL, 100A, 143A and 143AM are required to demonstrate an understanding of general lab safety and of the UCSD Undergraduate Chemistry Lab Rules. Passing the Lab Safety Exam (administered in the second or third lab meeting) fulfills this requirement; students who do not pass the Lab Safety Exam may be administratively dropped from the course with the grade of "W." Information on the Lab Safety Exam (including study resources and topics which may be covered) will be distributed in the first class lecture. Each student is responsible for learning the material. Information on general lab practices and our specific rules can be found on the web at: http://chem-courses.ucsd.edu/Uglabs/ and http://blink.ucsd.edu/Blink/External/Topics/How_To/0,1260,14110,00.html .
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11. Undergraduate Laboratory Safety Exam STUDY GUIDE & PRACTICE QUESTIONS WINTER 2010 Sheila Kennedy, CHO John Palmer, PhD Chemistry & Biochemistry University of California, San Diego
18. Evacuate Safely Turn off gas & electricity in your area Pick up personal bags, if safe Stairs only - never elevators Pull fire alarm (near stairs) while exiting Assist others Assemble & account - don’t risk injury to responders Report to your lab supervisor TA Instructor Lab staff
22. SAFETY EXAM In lab class 2nd meeting: Analytical & O-Chem Labs 3rd meeting: General Chem Lab Proctored by Lab TA pass back to work fail drop class or go to second exam
25. ~ 500 students in Introductory Inorganic Chemistry Lab (General Chem) ~ 450 in Introductory Organic Chemistry Lab 80 – 100 in Introductory Analytical Chemistry Lab
26. REVIEW MEETING Option for students studying for exam 2 Small group study Questions to staff Demonstration of goggles, bottle jackets, waste bottles . . . .
27. TEST AGAIN Multiple-choice Comments encouraged 7:00AM – results in the afternoon pass return to lab class fail administrative drop from class
28. WHINING & MOANING “I really, really need to stay in this class...” “Nobody told me I failed” “I didn’t check my scores – I assumed I passed” “I couldn’t have failed . . . it’s only a safety test ”
29. the flow ANNOUNCEMENTS EXAM 2ND EXAM STUDY or REVIEW REVIEW CONTINUE WITH LAB CLASS> 90% + >90% WHINING & MOANING
GOOD AFTERNOON. I’m Sheila KennedySafety CoordinatorChemistry & BiochemistryTeaching LabsUCSD Co-author: John PalmerOurDepartment Safety DirectorAbout 10 yr ago, when I was still fairly new in my job, John & I talked about our program here in San Francisco.
we talked then about using our web pages as a medium for teaching lab safety to our undergraduate lab students. Today I’ll talk about: our current training & testing program and our next big step going forwardOur current training & testing program begins with our Teaching Labs web sitewhich is embedded in our department ACADEMIC PROGRAM pages This is the student’s source for Rules, MSDS files, and explanations about how the training & testing program works.
Our program is based on self-study. We: work with the Instructors to make study materials available to the students make ourselves available to students lab studentneeds to go to our materials learn the topics we present and pass an exam on those topicsdifferent from new employee training, which is run by our campus EH&S dept: - the new employee is required to attend a presentation - attendance is equated with training, even if the employee sleeps through the presentation. In our Teaching Labs program, the student isn’t required to attend our lecture; they’re not required to read anything – the gateway for being allowed to remain in a lab class is passing the exam. This has led to an unfortunate emphasis on the examination rather than the training, but in a way that suits our student population: extremely results-oriented – if you can give a grade or points toward a grade, you get their attention.
many of our labstudents are returning students and already awareof the program, but we need to make sure everything is clear, so ANNOUNCEMENTS are made about the program via various media: In the schedule of classes – this text is printed in each Course Syllabus – usually with a link back to our home page
POSTERS are place on all lab doors.& the same page is published (as pdf) in the department web pages
[lab equipment photos]On the first day of class, TAs are instructed to - remind students to study the available resources on lab safety - announce the exam- introduce students to safety equipment in the lab
[web page – lower half]All students are referred to our labs home page showing links to:
OUR RULES - We have lots of rules
the short version of the RULES
We have also produced a STUDY GUIDE, which some find helpful.
ACS publication: SAFETY IN THE ACADEMIC CHEMISTRY LABORATORY
Our on-line [STUDY GUIDE]Is a list of topics to study
We also refer students to the Campus EH&S web pages for more general information. It’s important to make this connection, as a lot of our lab students end up working in the research labs during their time at the UNIV.
- [MSDS search engine ]Students are instructed to find and play with the MSDS search engine and be prepared to sift information from an MSDS I do tell them ‘IT WILL BE ON THE TEST”
The UC MSDS search page is fairly easy to use, but takes a little practice. My suggestion to students is that they begin by searching & reading 4 MSDS, to get a feel for the search & to see how the MSDS are typically written.
our lecture is presented twice in most terms ~2 HR EACH draws about 250 – 300 students to each presentationWe try to keep people awake through- MSDSs
Building evacuation plans
Hazardous materials storage
... And we’ve been known to tell horror stories.
[EXAM]For about the past 10 years, the GATEWAY exam has been a 25-question multiple-choice exam including a question that require the student to read an MSDS.Passing score on the exam is 75% and we typically see 90% or better passing in all classes – higher in classes aimed at CHEM majors. Some Instructors use the safety exam score as a quiz score in class, but that varies among the Lab Instructors.
We score it on a Scantron machine and report the scores, on an EXCEL file, to the Course Instructor. The Instructor posts scores on the class website. It is the explicitly stated responsibility of each student to check the website for the test score & make sure s/he passed.
We give that exam to about 1000 students in 3 or 4 classes; our typical numbers are: 500 In Introductory Inorganic Chemistry Lab = General Chem (24 X 24 = 576)450 In Introductory Organic Chemistry Lab (20 X 24 = 480)80 – 100 Introductory Analytical Chemistry Lab[student taking exam]Students who fail the first exam get one more chance to pass: a different 25-question multi-choice exam with an 85% passing score.
REVIEW MEETINGOpen structure – one student’s questions lead to anotherUse a conference room with white boards
At one time, the second exam was a combination of short-answer, multiple-choice and matching questions – to better test students who don’t test well on multiple-choice tests. Grading that exam started to eat my life. I also had real questions about equity – I gave considerable partial credit on short-answer questions & it was hard making sure I gave similar credit for different answers that basically covered the same territory. I also had to slog through some considerably strange sentence structures and some really horrid handwriting. So we changed the second exam to a the second exam multi-choice test with COMMENTS. We encourage students to write comment about the exam, the clarity of the questions, the efficacy of the training program – anything to do with the training & testing process. Many of them take us up on the offer & write pages of comments. Comments cannot hurt a student’s score but, for students who are close to failing the second exam, the comments sometimes show some understanding that isn’t apparent on the multi-choice exam.
A few still fail, almost every quarter. The largest group who fail are second language learners who just don’t handle the language well enough to test well little whiningThe other group is those who are too arrogant to study lots of whining. A small number every quarter just don’t show up for the second exam – some don’t check their scores because they’re sure they passed.
So we have a program that looks like this:
A calendar view is a little simpler, but it’s still a very full 2 weeks at the beginning of every 10-week quarter. In summer term, which is 5 weeks, we do everything twice as fast and we try to have it all done in the first week.Nervous breakdowns are optional but fully justified. -----------------------------One drawbacks of our current system is that by the time we finish dealing with 2 exams and open up spaces in the labs by dropping the students who don’t pass...the deadline to add a lab class is long gone & the space remains open. This is all happening while we have long waitlists of students trying to get into these labs.
During the quarter, we address some specific topics with individual classes.In General CHEM Lab, we train the TAs to teach a short lesson on hood use.
In Introductory Analytical CHEM we talk about Compressed gas safety.
We’re now in the middle of what’s turning out to be a nearly 2-yr project to revamp the program. We’ve moved the exam from a paper test to an on-line exam, using the WebCT course management software. We pilot tested our new program with some small classes.
In Spring 2010 – which starts on Monday – we’ll be releasing the on-line test to all three classes ~1000 students. Since there is no testing facility on campus to accommodate 260 students at computers, the students will be instructed to take the exam during a specific time period and results will be available to the Instructors as soon as the exam availability period closes.
In the coming terms, we hope to - move the training & testing time frame back - get it all done sooner - and attacking the problem of spaces left open when students failOR – better yet – find a way to only register those students who have passed. We are consulting with our Registrar and the IT people on how best to tackle this.
