Enhancing Student Interest in a General Chemistry Course via Short, In-Class Topical Presentations: A Qualitative Assessment

Retention of students' attention in general chemistry courses stands as one of the main challenges that educators are facing in classes of any size and is especially prevalent with classes composed of mixed majors. Herein, we describe our experience with introducing short, 10 min student lectures ("flash talks") on popular chemistry topics with occasional experimental chemistry demonstrations that related chemistry to real life or areas of contemporary interest as an efficient way to introduce real-world applications. Short lectures on popular topics by students from the class or other individuals in first-year chemistry classes of the integrated undergraduate "Foundations of Science" course series were found to have a positive effect on maintaining students' attention and participation in the class. These interventions effectively split the class into smaller portions, while they also were well received by students who otherwise are not attentive in the class. They had a positive effect on the students' ability to maintain interest in the second half of the chemistry class. We propose that such short talks, whenever class time constraints permit, be implemented in large general chemistry courses to make the chemistry content more accessible to students with a broad range of interests.