Teaching Activities-David V. Dearden

Courses Taught

Chemistry 2451 (UT-Arlington, Sophomore Level, Quantitative Analysis)

I taught this course seven times, Fall 1990, Spring 1991, Fall 1991, Spring 1992, Fall 1992, Spring 1993 and Fall 1993. I updated the course and modified the curriculum a great deal, and introduced a new textbook (D. C. Harris, Quantitative Chemical Analysis, 3rd. edition; Freeman: New York, 1991). I changed the laboratory curriculum to decrease the emphasis on titration and increase coverage of instrumental techniques, with focus on socially relevant problems. New experiments I introduced include a redox analysis to determine the stoichiometry in a high-temperature "1-2-3" superconductor, colorimetric analysis of iron in commercial vitamin supplements, and gas chromatographic analysis of gasoline for the detection and quantitation of methanol. I also introduced computer-aided instruction into the curriculum, with computer-generated lecture presentations and spreadsheet data analysis and modeling being key features.

Chemistry 226 (BYU, Freshman Level, Introductory Analytical Chemistry)

I taught this course Fall semester, 1994 (enrollment: 63 students), and Winter semester, 1996 (enrollment: 70 students). The entire course is presented to the students using computerized multimedia including the use of animation, digitized still images, sound, digital video, and dynamic linking to other software such as spreadsheets and word processors. Using the Authorware Professional authoring software package, I have produced a set of about 20 multimedia presentations to accompany the full one-semester course, covering topics such as use of analytical balances, titrations, statistical analysis of laboratory results, chemical equilibria, solubility, acid-base chemistry, oxidation-reduction, and a scheme for qualitative elemental analysis. The presentations, intended primarily to replace traditional "chalk and eraser" lectures, are delivered with a laptop computer and either an overhead projection plate or an RGB projector, and are also placed on a campus server and made available to the students as "interactive notes". The software runs on both Macintosh and DOS/Windows platforms, and includes limited hyperlinking to maximize flexibility in presentation. More recently, I have been working to add digitized video demonstrations of the laboratory work to the presentations.

All of the computer presentations are available for the Macintosh platform, and some have been ported to Windows. All are available free; e-mail Dr. Dearden for more information.

Chemistry 227 (BYU, Sophomore Level, Introductory Analytical Chemistry)

I taught this course Spring term 1995 (enrollment: 36 students), Fall semester 1995 (enrollment: 26 students), and Fall semester 1996 (enrollment: 27 students). I have begun to develop multimedia materials similar to those used in Chem 226 for this follow-up course, including more advanced tutorials on statistics in chemistry, acid-base interactions, optical spectroscopy, and chromatography.

Chemistry 391 (BYU, Junior/Senior Level, Technical Writing Using Chemical Literature)

I taught this course Winter semester 1997 (enrollment: 43 students), jointly with Professor S. Scott Zimmerman, and by myself Winter semester 1998 (enrollment: 27 students). This is an intensive technical writing course based on chemical literature sources. It fulfills the General Education Advanced Writing requirement at BYU. The course includes literature awareness and searching techniques, word processing and desktop publishing, and technical writing. The syllabus for the course is posted on the WorldWide Web, as are many of the course handouts.

Physical Science 100 (BYU, Freshman (General Education) Level, Introduction to Physical Science)

I taught this course for the first time during Winter semester 1998 (enrollment: 197 students). The course assumes no prior knowledge of physical science, and covers Newtonian mechanics, Special Relativity, the laws of thermodynamics, theories of the atom, chemical principles including periodic properties and some introductory materials science, cosmology, the geologic column, and plate techtonics (Whew!). It includes many in-class demonstrations, and is a lot of fun to teach. Lecture notes for the course are available on the web. I helped author the textbook we currently use for course (first published in 2005, with a 2nd edition to be available in early 2007).

Chemistry 729R (BYU, Special Topics: Mass Spectrometry)

I taught this course Winter semester 2000 (enrollment: 7 students). This was an advanced graduate course in mass spectrometry, drawing about half its material from Interpretation of Mass Spectra by McLafferty and Turecek, and about half from Journal of Mass Spectrometry special features articles.

Chemistry 223 (BYU, Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis)

I taught this course Spring term 2002 (enrollment: 24 students), Fall semester 2002 (enrollment, 34 students), Spring term 2003 (enrollment: 19 students), Fall semester 2003 (enrollment, 47 students), Spring term 2004 (enrollment: 21 students), Fall semester 2004 (enrollment: 27 students), and Spring term 2005 (enrollment: 25 students). This is an introductory laboratory course in analytical chemistry for students who are not chemistry majors (most are taking the course to fulfill requirements for a chemistry minor). I was heavily involved in modernizing and updating the curriculum.

Chemistry 105 (BYU, General College Chemistry)

I taught this course Winter and Fall semesters 2005 (enrollment: about 235 students). This is a 4-credit-hour, introductory course in general college chemistry; it is one of the largest service courses taught by our department. I developed media-rich material, and made extensive use of online technologies to try to provide interactive experiences for the students despite the large enrollment in the course.