OVERALL UPDATE

Lab Manuals:
I have posted final drafts for review.  I also added a folder of 30A pre-labs for anyone interested.
To do:
Scan lab notebook pages.
Finalize CuO lab.
Send final request for review.
Post final drafts on Department Blackboard Site
Send changes to Gerry

SLO Research:
Done.  All reports posted  on sabbatical report website.
To do: None, unless I hear from faculty contacted but have not responded.

Physio-Micro Questions:
Draft of compendium of questions sent to Mike and Rich and Jill and Barbara for review.
Notes and compendium of questions posted on sabbatical report website.
To do: Incorporate any changes if needed based on review comments.

Book Reading:
About halfway through my 12th book.
To do: Three more books to read and annotate.

Article Reading:
Have pre-selected the top 30 articles from the articles I have collected for reading.
To do: Read and annotate at least 30 articles.

UPDATES

In the last few days, I have been working on (in addition to continuing with my book reading):

1) Finalizing the SLO research report.
2) Finalizing the Micro-Physio questions and adding a special note about how some questions may be beyond the scope of the 30A course in terms of time required to cover some of the more complex, detailed word problems.
3) Finishing revisions on the pre-labs for experiments I do in 30A.  I will upload these along with the revised lab procedures to share with other instructors.
4) Updating my sabbatical report and starting to collect in a folder the final supporting documents for my sabbatical report
5) I am almost ready to send the micro-physio questions

I also worked on the following non-sabbatical activities:
1) I cleaned up the data reports for all the SLO assessments for Chemistry
2) I identified SLO's that can be deactivated and sent it to Mike and Rich for feedback.
3) Downloaded all the EVST 5 files from blackboard for review and prep.
4) Complete drafts of my 1A and 30A classes in the fall.
5) I also worked on the nomination points.

Overall Update

Today:

SLO Project

1) I studied the CCSF Chemistry SLO website in more detail to extract information pertaining to the four questions I have about the SLO process.

2) I sent two more email inquiries to a Glendale Community College chemistry professor and division chair and to a San Jose City College chemistry faculty and member of the SLO committee.

Lab Manual

1) I received a response from Mike about looking at the revised 3102 lab as he concedes that he has the same issues with the current one.

2) I checked on my copper oxide compound left overnight drying in the fume hood.  It seemed pretty dry but the mass I got for the compound indicated a CuO2 formula which does not make sense.  I suspect  that there is still water so I left it again overnight in the fume hood for weighing tomorrow.  It might be better if students use the oven for drying and dry to constant weight.

Physio-Micro Questions

1) I finally finished reading Chapter 18.

2) I have now about 36 questions from Silverthorn's text.

3) I added more notes about O2 and CO2 transport.

Articles:

I downloaded more articles for reading.

Others:

First day of installation for the GC-MS.  I chatted with and watched the guy installing it for a while.

I looked for LLNL posters in my email for archiving.

OVERALL Update

Nine weeks into my sabbatical, here is a list of what I have done so far:

Lab Manual:

I have gone through every lab to be revised, cleaned up the OCR files, revised safety precautions and incorporated other changes based on my notes from teaching the classes and notes from other faculty.  These changes include redrawing structures of molecules, correcting chemical formulas and symbols, cleaning up tables, graphs, and figures, rewriting chemical equations, and rewriting calculation steps.  Other changes include removing any references to the use of mercury, rewriting instructions for new equipment such as the pH meters and the Vernier visible spectrometers, replacing some chemical reagents.  I also have spent close to 20 hours improving upon the 30B Lab 19.2.  I also have spent 5 hours trying out a new set of salts for Lab 3102.  Notes and changes are documented in an Excel spreadsheet.  For each revised lab, I have detailed notes of what changes have been made both in an excel spreadsheet and highlighted in blue with accompanying comments in the annotated versions.  I will be posting these annotated versions for review by faculty and lab staff.

SLO Research:

I have completed descriptions of the SLO process for at least 3 colleges (Santa Rosa JC, Contra Costa College, and Mt. San Antonio College).  These three Colleges responded to questions by e-mail.  I have also perused the City College of San Francisco website and I believe I can have all my questions answered from their website.  I am still waiting for two more responses (Chabot College and Sacramento City College).

Based on what I have learned from the 4 colleges, I have written up a proposal for our own Chemistry Program SLO Implementation process that I have sent to my full-time colleagues.

Micro-Physio Questions

I have perused the lab manuals for the Physiology Course and Microbiology Course that Jill and Barbara have lent me.  I am also 3/4 done perusing relevant chapters and sections from the text used in the Physiology course (Silverthorn).  Up to date, I have written 65 questions, mostly for the 30A course but some for the 30B course as well.  The topics covered range from unit conversion and dimensional analysis, density, solution concentrations including osmolarities, gases, acid-base and pH, redox, nomenclature and molecular structure, etc.

I have also written 32 slides worth of notes to incorporate into my lectures for 30A and 30B.

Book Reading

I have read 3 books so far out of the 15.  I have started my fourth book.

Article Reading

I have collected some 20 or so articles for reading.  I am sure that reading these articles will generate more articles that will go on the list.

Sabbatical Project OVERALL Update

Lab Manuals:

I have created annotated versions of all labs that I plan to revise based on a survey of lab schedules.  There are still certain questions I need answered and certain procedures that need improvement but most of the content revisions are done.  

The next step would be to make these annotated pdf versions available for easy review and commenting by instructors.  I have not determined what web platform I would use for that.

Physio Micro Questions:

I am still perusing each lab in the Integrated Anatomy and Physiology lab manual that I borrowed from Jill.  I have reviewed 12 out of 16 labs and have created about 11 questions.  As I have mentioned in a previous post, instead of fixing questions to very specific topics like stoichiometry, it is much more productive to simply come up with viable questions appropriate to the topic rather than forcing a question out of the experiment to fit under a certain category.

The next step will be to peruse the microbiology lab manual that Barbara let me borrow.

SLO Research

I have heard from 3 colleges and am still awaiting responses from 2 that I contacted last week.

Next steps:

Summarize the responses for each college into a report form.  Send further questions if necessary.

Contact 2 or more colleges.

Book Reading:

Finished three books, 2 by Atkins and the third one on 17 Molecules that Changed the World.

Next steps:

Clean up my notes from the 2 Atkins books into an annotated bibliography form

Create powerpoints from the 17 Molecules book

Select my next book

Finalize the list of the remaining books

Article Reading

Sadly, only one article read so far!

Next steps:

Start reading the other articles I have downloaded!

That is all for now!