The themes of the terms’ iterations /
Return oft to CHEM formulations./
More than content distilled, /
Note an aim for broad skills /
Via provenance; authentication.
This is a non-Bluesky limerick that has come to mind this autumn, in teaching my Chemistry in Art course and thinking yet again of Jonathan Malesic’s fascinating essay about teaching and learning in the age of generative AI. As with other posts related to that essay, I’ll give myself some additional words here, to explore the wider-ranging topic.
“The themes of the terms’ iterations /
Return oft to CHEM formulations…”
I’ve noticed an interesting pattern in the past few years on this site. I tend to use the early weeks of autumn solely to revisit the April limericks; I need as much structure as possible in the whirlwind first few weeks of class. Once we get through a third or so of the semester, though, I find my footing, and new verses (“CHEM formulations”) come more often to mind.
“More than content distilled…”
I’ve written before about how Introductory Chemistry can seem overwhelming: it’s fast-paced; it changes focus in a significant way every two weeks or so. It is fundamentally a survey course but with material that is bewildering at multiple levels, focused on both “strange terms” and “strange things,” to borrow yet again Lucretius’s phrasing from millennia ago.
I never learned how to use a slide rule. Likewise, students in years ahead might well approach the content of their STEM courses in a fundamentally different way. However, the value of the underlying problem-solving processes will endure.
“Note an aim for broad skills /
Via provenance; authentication.”
I’ve observed (as have many, judging from social media posts and informal conversations) that part of the skill set students will employ moving forward involves concluding whether the results of their searches or queries have any merit. This has reminded me of themes in my Chemistry in Art course, where we discuss studies in art authentication: discerning whether or not a painting is genuine.
In that course, we talk about how some chemistry-themed instruments and techniques can provide evidence about the materials used. For instance, if a supposedly-17th-century artwork uses a pigment not synthesized until the 20th century, as verified via spectroscopic analysis, that is solid evidence in support of its being a forgery. Generally, though, such instrumental techniques are expensive and, depending on the sampling technique, possibly destructive.
Two broader terms in the context of art authentication are provenance and connoisseurship. The former is the paper trail linked to an artwork. [Are there letters where an artist discussed the painting? Are there receipts or other documentation wherein the piece can be traced to different owners through the years? (Nota bene: such paperwork can also be forged…)] The latter is the expert opinion that the practiced eye of an art historian can bring to the question. (Does this painting align with the artist’s timeline of work, with their known techniques, and/or with the era more generally?)
Increasingly, I reference these broader skill sets in teaching my CHEM-specific courses, too, although I present them generally. Provenance: “If you find an answer in an internet search, from where is that answer coming in the first place? Can you follow the relevant links to find the actual source and learn more?” Connoisseurship: “Using your chemical intuition and given what you are learning in this course, does this answer actually make sense?” This last, especially, is the same question I’ve been asking students for years, about the results displayed on their calculators.
While an array of more-powerful tools are now available for support in studying, the abilities to discern how well the tools work and to actually learn the material for themselves, as demonstrated on impending exams, remain consistently vital for students. Here, the phrase “provenance; authentication” stood in for this, given the limerick’s scansion constraints. As with “soft skills,” such approaches are less-acknowledged but indispensable (as noted in the title, they are “oft[en] skills” used) in progressing through an educational path.
