The pedagogical implications of using MatLab in integrated chemistry and matehamatics courses

Journal article, 2005

The last years the undergraduate chemistry and mathematics courses at Chalmers Tekniska Högskola (Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden) has undergone a major curriculum reform. One of the driving motives behind the reform was that students should learn to use mathematics as a real tool for solving chemical problems. Mathematicians and chemists, with pedagogical help from an educational expert, changed the traditional course structure in terms of organisation, content, and teaching and learning methods. This paper concentrates on the use of MATLAB in laboratory work and in individual and group assignments. It deals, in particular, with the pedagogical benefits that the designers of the new course saw in presenting real chemical problems that could be solved using applied mathematics and the MATLAB software. Student experience was evaluated both by the teachers and the educational consultant and responses are largely positive. Increased student learning can be seen through higher motivation and synergy effects of treating chemical problems in the MATLAB tutorials. The most serious problem is to give all students the necessary MATLAB skills and a risk is an overestimation of the MATLAB proficiency in subsequent courses leading to un-proportional workload on projects and little time for reading and study.