Abstract:

The teaching of Organic Chemistry to future chemical engineers should include the formal aspects of the scientific discipline and be complemented by a general formation related to its social and technological aspects. In this regard it could be useful to incentivize a long-term team work project, which integrates a blog about a topic of actual interest, like for example biofuels. The investigation, which will be briefly described in the following, tries to find answers to the following questions: To what extent the use of a blog promotes and increases the students’ capacity of searching relevant information? To what extent the students can obtain scientific knowledge through their interactions via a blog?

Initial hypothesis:
The university students enrolled in the Organic Chemistry course in the second year of the Chemical Engineering degree have no detailed knowledge about the nature, methods of production, utility, advantages, and disadvantages of the main biofuels (biodiesel and bioethanol). They have eventually some vague notions and a positive opinion based on generally assumed beneficial effects of biofuels on the reduction of gases related to the greenhouse effect.

Design of the investigation:
1.- Initial questionnaire. This serves to manifest the initial point of view and knowledge of the students about biofuels.

2.- Creation of a blog about biofuels during 3 months. The teacher and the students are editors of the blog, realizing visits and making comments. The teacher has two functions: a) orientation: direct the students’ work toward the main aspects of the topic and b) motivation: realizing frequent visits of the blog and make comments, which stimulate the work of the students. The students are requested to compromise themselves to make at least two contributions (articles or comments) to the blog per week.

3.- Incidence of the blog in the evaluation of the students. Based on the information and reflections deposited in the blog, small groups of students realize a short presentation (10 minutes) in the classroom in front of their colleagues and the teacher. The presentation and the contribution to the blog are evaluated by the teacher and the other students. The outcome integrates in the final grading.

4.- Evaluation of the impact of the initiative. The process of the evaluation of the impact of this initiative is based on three resources: a) a final questionnaire, which includes again the initially made questions (point 1) and new questions, which allow the perception of the students’ advance of knowledge about the topic, b) a self-evaluation of the students, and c) the comparison (questionnaire) with an independent group of students of the same educational level, but which have no knowledge about the blog.

Based on the first obtained results the following preliminary conclusions can be made:
- A complete lack of knowledge by the students about the social, ecological, and scientific aspects of biofuels is evident at the starting point of the project.
- The students contribute to the blog. They feel obviously attracted by this form of participation and the involved team work.
- The sources of information, used by the students, are mainly in Spanish and have been encountered with general search engines like Google or similar.
- The obtained understanding about the topic at the end of the project is still rather superficial.

Keywords:

Blog, organic chemistry, team work, biofuels.