This is an in-class activity--or an activity students do prior to class to in preparation for an in-class discussion--to help students identify stylistic components of published writing.  I provide the students with an appropriate journal article, typically a communication from Inorganic Chemistry, such as Inorg. Chem. 2008, 47, 2922-2924 (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/ic702373b) or Inorg. Chem.

For many years I have resisted using clickers, mainly because at our university there is no standard universal clicker. I wanted to keep student costs as low as possible but also desired the type of live feedback during a lecture that clicker questions can provide. In both my general chem. (200-300 students) and upper division courses (50-75 students), I now pass out 4 or 5 colored notecards on the first day of class and make sure everyone has one of each color.

This collaboratively developed inorganic chemistry-based ethics case study has been designed for use with general science students (not necessarily chemistry or inorganic chemistry students).  It could be used as part of a research ethics training program for undergraduates or as a stand-alone research group meeting on ethics or class assignment on data integrity. In this particular case study two data points are suspected of being in error because of a student mistake in labeling samples.

For the past four years, I have required my inorganic students to write short 3-page formal lab reports in the form of communication to the Journal of the American Chemical Society.  This exercise has relieved some of the stress on my students who are writing reports of other science classes and simplified my grading.  Using Jeffrey Kovac's Writing Across the Chemistry Curriculum: An Instructor's Handbook as a starting point, I have developed a rubric to provide qualitative feedback to the stu