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org/jchemeduc Article

An Experiential Learning Chemistry Course for Nonmajors Taught

through the Lens of Science Fiction
L. Gaby Avila-Bront*
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ABSTRACT: A nonmajors general chemistry course entitled “Putting the Science in

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SciFi” was taught to 19 seniors at the College of the Holy Cross in 2018. The course
coupled the delivery of content with experiential learning strategies in the form of
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writing assignments and hands-on activities. A pretest and posttest indicate that
students gained and retained basic scientific information throughout the semester.
Student feedback reveals a positive learning experience. As a result, the pedagogical
tools used in this course carry significant implications to the course design of science
curriculum.

KEYWORDS: Nonmajor Courses, Curriculum, Applications of Chemistry, Constructivism, Learning Theories, Communication/Writing

■ INTRODUCTION
Currently, the average person is exposed to more scientific
information than at any other point in history via new scientific
studies in news outlets and science fiction stories in mainstream
media.1 There exists, therefore, a great need to educate students
to become critical consumers of the scientific information that
they are being exposed to.2 It has been shown that students
graduating with their degrees in scientific disciplines can struggle
to be critical consumers of scientific information,3 i.e., capable of
distinguishing fact from fiction. Furthermore, if students
graduating with their degrees from a humanities discipline
have not been exposed to scientific principles since high school,
it can be more challenging for them to discern fact from fiction.3
In developing “Putting the Science in SciFi”, a nonmajors
chemistry course, I sought to create a foundation of the basics of
scientific knowledge and inquiry. The goal was to empower the
students to become critical consumers of the science they are
exposed to. I promoted student engagement and learning by
intertwining content delivery with experiential learning in the
form of hands-on activities and writing assignments.4
Although liberal arts colleges require that their students
complete at least 1 course in a natural science,9 there remains a
pervasive underpreparedness of students in quantitative
reasoning skills and an apprehension of scientific con-
cepts.3,10−18 Historically, science has been taught using a variety
of pedagogies such as discovery learning5 or constructivist
approaches,6 and this has always had tremendous implications in
scientific citizenship.7,8 However, science education in the
United States continues to face challenges at all levels of student
development, at the heart of which is the students’ lack of
© XXXX American Chemical Society and
Division of Chemical Education, Inc.
A J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
motivation to question scientific phenomena, and their inability
to reason quantitatively.
The teaching of science through fiction has been previously
explored.19−26 For example, Brown et al. argue for the use of
Captain America to “set the pedagogical stage” of the courses.19
Jack Stocker put forth the chemical nature of a number of
classical science fiction stories to make the connections between
fiction and reality readily available for educators.27 However, as
Jack Stocker noted, chemistry is “not one of the sciences
dominating the field of science fiction”. An internet search of
nonmajors courses taught through the lens of science fiction
reveals that this is not a course commonly found in the chemistry
departments of higher education institutions. Even within
literature that expounds on the scientific principles behind
famous science fiction stories, there is a dearth of the chemistry at
the heart of these stories, as many focus instead on the physics at
the heart of the stories.27−32 Due to the plethora of science
fiction movies and television programs available to the casual
consumer, I was eager to present chemical phenomena through
the lens of science fiction.
A cursory glance can reduce this course to the delivery of
scientific facts through entertaining stories. However, by making
use of experiential learning assignments on the backdrop of
science fiction, the students reflected on the scientific principles
Received: March 17, 2020
Revised: July 27, 2020
https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00264
Journal of Chemical Education
and used them to make meaning of their life experiences and the
course content. The hands-on activities and the writing
assignments present a tour of the experiential learning cycle by
David Kolb.33 The hands-on activities allowed the students to
participate in active experimentation and concrete experience,
while the writing assignments enabled the students to engage in
reflective observation and abstract conceptualization.
Learning Objectives
This class was taught for the first time in 2018 to 19 fourth-year
students. The learning objectives of the course were as follows:
1. To be able to differentiate the realistic, the possible, and
the fantastical aspects of science fiction.
2. To construct a knowledge base of the fundamentals of
chemical principles that are at the heart of natural
phenomena.
3. To develop critical thinking skills, including to learn to
identify questions and design experiments that will clarify
those questions.
4. To develop problem solving skills that will aid in future
science courses (and life in general!) through use of the
scientific method.
5. To discover how to produce and analyze data using
chemical principles for interpretation.
■ COURSE STRUCTURE AND CONTENT
Logistics
This course was designed for the everyday consumer of science
fiction and not geared to committed fans of the genre. As such, I
provided the students with examples from science fiction such as
summaries of stories, photocopies of comic book pages, or video
clips of science fiction media. Science fiction stories were
debunked in class, while the assignments gave students the
opportunity to reflect on and learn the concepts experientially.
Throughout the semester, I incorporated hands-on activities to
solidify the topics we were discussing, as it has been
demonstrated that hands-on and lab-based learning are effective
motivators of student inquiry. These activities included basic
experiments that are safe enough to carry out in a lecture space,
as well as the PhET interactive computer simulations available
from the University of Colorado Boulder.34
This class was taught in a time block of 75 min and met twice a
week. Each session was a combination of content delivered on
the board, an example of science fiction in the media as a video
clip or projection, a PowerPoint presentation, and either a
demonstration or a hands-on activity. Most of the students were
economics (9/19 students) majors followed by English, history,
and political science (2/19 students each) majors. The
distribution of majors generally mirrored the college-wide
distribution of majors as economics, political science, and
English are the three most popular majors at the college.
Topic Progression
The course started by covering the basics of scientific inquiry,
followed by chemical concepts ranging from the microscopic to
the macroscopic. At the end of each lecture, I would upload a
document to the college’s online learning management system
entitled “What did we do today?” (Supporting Information). In
this document, I listed the topics covered in the session, the
activity conducted in class, the example of the lecture topics in
science fiction, and any upcoming assignments so that the
students could visualize the flow of the course in real time.
B https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00264
pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc Article
Reading Assignments
There was no single textbook associated with the class, and the
reading assignments were drawn from multiple sources. There
are numerous books written by scientists in various disciplines
explaining the science behind science fiction stories. A small
sampling of these books was selected, and passages from each
book were used as the reading assignments (Table 1).29−32 The
Martian by Andy Weir was selected as the semester-long reading
project due to its ability to create a fictional story based on sound
scientific principles.
Table 1. Reading Assignments
Week Topic Corresponding Reading Assignment
1 Experimental design Importance of Stupidity in Scientif ic Research
by Martin Schwartz
2 Classification of matter “Atoms or Bits” from The Physics of Star
Trek by Lawrence Krauss
7−8 Nuclear chemistry and “The Force” from The Science of Star Wars
quantum mechanics by Jeanne Cavalos
9 Color and the visible “Blasters and Lightsabers” from The Physics
spectrum of Star Wars by Patrick Johnson
10 LASERs “When in Doubt, Blast!” from The Science
of Star Wars by Jeanne Cavelos
14 Class discussions The Martian by Andy Weir
In their written feedback, students remarked that the reading
assignments allowed them to relate the class to science fiction
media. Several students commented that the reading assign-
ments were at first unclear but became clearer through class
discussion. Other students stated that the readings were
interesting supplements highlighting the course’s material in
science fiction.
Learning Blocks
The course was divided into three learning blocks: two training
learning blocks and an educating learning block, according to the
nature of the knowledge gained by the students (Table 2).35
Learning blocks were used to encourage the students to make
meaning of the scientific principles in science fiction stories, as
well as to scaffold the learning experience.36,37 The three
learning blocks moved the students through the cognitive,
associative, and autonomous stages of learning.38
First Training Learning Block. The first training learning
block set forth foundational principles in science. Hands-on
activities within this and all learning blocks addressed the third
and fifth learning objectives. I will describe the activity that I
created for the session on “measurement, uncertainty, and
dimensional analysis”. To establish the need for standard units of
measurement, the students were divided into groups and asked
to measure the classroom using only their bodies. The second
portion of the activity introduced systematic and random error
by asking the students to measure the room with measurement
tools that were not uniform and changing how many significant
digits the students reported their measurements. The students
were highly engaged with this activity throughout the duration
of the session. Surveys completed by 17 of the students on the
last day of class showed that on a Likert scale of 1−5, the average
response to the question “Please rate how the activity ‘Measure
the room’ helped your understanding of the concepts covered in
class” was 4.0 with a standard deviation of 1.1 (see Supporting
Information).
Second Training Learning Block. The second training
learning block covered standard topics found in introductory
J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc Article

Table 2. Learning Block Structure and Course Progressiona from their knowledge of radiation therapy in cancer patients and
the devastation caused by nuclear explosions.
Corresponding Corresponding
Examples in Hands-On Third Educating Learning Block. During the educating
Selected Topics Science Fiction Activities learning block, students presented and discussed their
(1) Training Block 7 Sessions, Scientific Inquiry and Universal Principles independent projects. For a full discussion of the student
Matter Star Trek Poll friends to projects associated with this learning block, the reader is referred
transporter gather data to the subsequent section.
Measurement

Motion
Electricity
Fictional units

Light-speed travel
Electro vs
Measure the
room

Static electricity
■ DISCUSSION
Assignments
Spiderman and tape
Student performance and the achievement of the learning
Magnetism Magneto Make your own
compass objectives were measured on the basis of three exams (including
(2) Training Block 13 Sessions, General Chemistry a comprehensive final exam), five quantitative reasoning
Atomic structure Fictional chemical assignments (QRAs), three experiential learning writing assign-
elements ments, one final project (comic book design), and one in-class
Chemical reactions Flubber presentation. A variety of assignments were employed to engage
Nuclear chemistry Radioactivity and M&M activity a diverse set of learners according to Kolb’s theory.33 On the last
superheroes day of class, 17 of the students completed a survey to quantify
Quantum mechanics Ant Man Visit Research how the assignments benefited their understanding of the
Lab
Electromagnetic radiation, thermal X-ray vision, Light through
concepts covered in class on a Likert Scale from 1 to 5, with 5
energy LASER colored referring to benefited highly (Table 3).
weapons solutions
Lattice energy of crystals Human torch Temperature of Table 3. Student Responses to Assignment Surveys
glow sticks
States of matter Kyber crystals, Dissolution of Question: Please Rate How the Average
energon CaCl2 Assignments below Helped Your Response
Kitty Pryde, the Liquid nitrogen Understanding of the Concepts on Likert Standard Total
vision Covered in Cass Scale Deviation Responses
(3) Educating Block 3 Sessions, Presentations and Discussions QRA 1: Unit conversion and significant 4.4 0.7 17
“Star Trek Tech” presentations, The Student- Student figures
Martian discussion, comic book submitted presentations QRA 2: Stoichiometry and Newtonian 4.2 0.7 17
presentations examples physics
a
Items on the same line directly correspond to each other. For the full QRA 3: Quantum mechanics and 4.1 0.9 17
electromagnetic radiation
list of topics, examples in science fiction, and hands-on activities,
QRA 4: Heat transfer 4.6 0.5 17
please see the Supporting Information.
QRA 5: Ideal gas law 4.6 0.6 17
general chemistry courses, starting with atomic structure and the Writing assignment 1: Design your 3.9 0.6 17
own element
use of chemical elements in fiction.39 This learning block Writing assignment 2: Quantum fiction 3.8 1.3 17
transitioned the course from the nanoscale world into the short story
macroscopic world by discussing energy first in the electro- Writing assignment 3: Photograph a 3.9 1.3 17
magnetic spectrum and then as a form of heat. Following this heat transfer process
transition, states of matter were explored. Final project: Create your own comic 4.1 1.1 17
book
In this learning block, the class discussion on nuclear
chemistry was particularly engaging. At the start of the session,
I was surprised to find that no students had previous knowledge Quantitative Reasoning Assignments. The quantitative
about “nuclear chemistry” and how it appears in comics. I assignments and written examinations addressed the first, third,
rephrased the question by changing “nuclear chemistry” to and fourth learning objectives. The problems used in QRAs were
“radiation”, and hands went up to be called on. After presenting the same as those used in introductory undergraduate chemistry
the basics of nuclear processes, the corresponding hands-on courses. Written examinations were a combination of
activity was the half-life of M&Ms from the Center for Nuclear quantitative problems and short answer questions. Each
Science and Technology Information.40 In this activity, students multipart exam question included a subset of questions on the
approximate a first-order decay process by shaking a bag of scientific accuracy of science fiction stories.
M&Ms and plotting how many candies flip over. Surveys Experiential Learning Writing Assignments. There was
completed by 17 of the students on the last day of class showed a total of three writing assignments throughout the semester and
that, on a Likert scale of 1−5, the average response to the one final writing assignment. The writing assignments addressed
question “Please rate how the activity ‘M&M Decay’ helped your the first through third learning objectives and provided the
understanding of the concepts covered in class” was 3.9 with a students with an avenue for experiential learning.
standard deviation of 0.9 (see Supporting Information). Last, we The first experiential learning writing assignment asked the
discussed the impossibility of a human gaining superhuman students to design a fictional chemical element. The students
abilities by either being bitten by a radioactive spider were provided with several fictional elements beforehand (see
(Spiderman) or being exposed to γ radiation (the Hulk). As a Supporting Information), including dilithium from Star Trek,
result of our class discussion, students realized that they would mithril from the Lord of the Rings, and Superman’s kryptonite.
have been able to debunk this science fiction for themselves: Students designed fictional elements that fell into two
each student knew of the effects of radiation on human bodies categories: elements with global ramifications and elements
C https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00264
J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
that granted the user superpowers. One student described a
radioactive element named Obsolevium with atomic number
137 and mass number 262 that releases energy as it
spontaneously decays. The student described that small samples
of this element must have been the stones used in the Quran’s
Ababil miracle.41 Another student described the element
Baronite, which grants a person increased strength and fits
into the current periodic table above fluorine.
The students continued their exploration of science in relation
to science fiction in their second writing assignment, which
tasked them with writing a 1000 word quantum fiction short
story. The majority of the students chose to write about the
orthodox position of the measurement postulate of quantum
mechanics, Figure 1.42 This position states that the act of
Figure 1. Breakdown of topics of student quantum fiction short stories.
Most of the students chose to write about the “measurement postulate”
of quantum mechanics with applications on the objectivity of reality.
performing a measurement on a quantum mechanical particle
“forces” the particle to decide on what value that measurement
will yield. One student described the superposition of both
having and not having a job offer as their phone rang with the
decision: the act of answering the phone would force one result
to become the reality. Within a different category, another
student wrote about a romantic separation between two
individuals who have been quantumly entangled, so their
emotional connection outlasts the physical separation.
While the first and second writing assignments dwelt in the
fictional realm, the third writing assignment tasked the students
with identifying and quantifying scientific processes in their
Figure 2. Comparison of student responses at the beginning and end of the semester.
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pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc Article
everyday lives. In the third experiential learning writing
assignment, students photographed an everyday process
involving heat transfer, summarized the phenomena involved,
and calculated the heat transferred. Most of the students’
submissions related to food, displaying vegetables roasting in the
oven, melted ice cream, and pots on the stove.
For the final class project, the students created their own
comic books using the concepts we covered during the semester
and presented the final versions to the class.43 One student
described an ice supervillain’s nefarious plan to cover a city in
slime, only to be stopped by the “Wiz Kid” who changed the
supervillain’s state of matter. Another student described a cat
attempting to catch its prey by tunneling through a wall as
electrons tunnel through potential energy barriers. This
assignment highlights the students’ use of science fiction as a
launching pad to drive their understanding of what is possible
and what is feasible. Understanding this distinction is a direct
result of learning chemistry through the lens of science fiction
and differentiates this course from other nonmajors courses.
A qualitative interpretation of the students’ choice in topics
reveals that, through fiction, most of the students desired to use
science to gain an understanding about their realities as well as
exert control over their fates. This demonstrates the students’
desire to relate fears and values in their lives to the topics they are
covering in their courses in order to form deeper connections to
knowledge.33,44−46 When analyzing the topics chosen for the
writing assignments, the progression from the first to the third
assignment reflects how the students relate to science and can be
summarized as “science creates, science informs, and science
sustains”. Science informs their physical sustenance, meaning of
the self (sense of control), and their ethical relationships to the
environment. These three facets make us human on the most
fundamental level, and the students, therefore, equate science
with explaining their humanity. If this is how the students relate
to science, then this carries implications in all science curricular
design, if future curricula will respond to the increasing demand
for science courses to break away from traditional pedago-
gies.47−49
Thematic Presentations and Class Discussions. The
students were further challenged to distinguish fact from fiction
by watching Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and presenting on
the possibilities of implementing technologies from the film.
The presented topics reflect variations on the theme of control,
J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
such as the creation of a new planet, retinal scanners, and
suspended animation. Their fear over the loss of their planetary
environment, their insecurities with privacy in the electronic age,
and their desire to determine their own mortality all represent
perspectives in their collective dialogue with science.
At the end of the semester, the students participated in a class
discussion of The Martian. During the discussion, students did
not discuss the science fiction elements of the story, rather
choosing to discuss loneliness, fear, and the effects of stress on a
person’s well-being. This discussion, reminiscent of Bloom’s
affective domain of learning,50 revealed that the students
engaged with science on the condition that science addresses
their individual emotions and did not want to be limited to
content.
■ ASSESSMENT
All assessment activities were reviewed by the Institutional
Review Board (IRB) at the College of the Holy Cross and were
judged to be exempt from informed consent. The determination
was based on the IRB article which identifies “Research
conducted in established or commonly accepted educational
settings involving normal educational practices...” as not
requiring IRB approval.
At the beginning of the semester, all 19 students completed a
pretest in the form of a pop quiz that was a combination of
multiple choice and short answer questions. The questions on
this quiz also appeared on the final exam at the end of the
semester for a posttest evaluation. There was an upward trend in
all the questions of this evaluation (Figure 2). The students were
not aware that the questions on the quiz would be repeated on
the final exam, and 13 weeks passed between the pretest and the
posttest.
Student Feedback
On the last day of class, 17 students completed a 7 question
survey to assess the effect that the course had on their learning
and appreciation of scientific principles by indicating their
agreement on a Likert scale with 5 indicating “strongly agree”
(Table 4).
The beauty of science fiction is that it pushes the boundaries
of our physical world to expand reality. The role of a science
fiction writer is not very different from the role of a scientific
Table 4. Student Responses to Survey Questions
Average
Response
on Likert Standard Total
Question Scale Deviation Responses
I have learned from the activities 4.2 0.9
during the course of the semester
My appreciation for the field of 3.8 1.0
scientific research has improved as a
result of this class
In the future, I will stop and think 3.5 0.9
about the science behind a natural
phenomenon
The topics covered in this class will 3.9 0.8
allow me to be able to distinguish
between scientific fact and fiction
The topics covered in this class will
help me understand natural
phenomena
My enjoyment of this class was (5,
4.4
4.2
1.0
1.0
high; 1, low)
The educational value of the class was 4.4 0.6
(5, high; 1, low)
pubs.acs.org/jchemeduc Article
researcher who seeks to push emerging phenomena to make
what was previously impossible a reality. Through this course,
students were placed at the intersection of these roles and were
challenged to be critical consumers of science. One student
commented, “As someone who has always dismissed science
classes as too difficult, I really appreciated this class. I find myself
questioning more things now.” Another student stated, “Overall
this class taught me to appreciate science in our natural world
and has allowed me to understand what is possible, what could
be possible, and what definitely could not be possible. Prior to
this class, without much knowledge of Star Trek I thought none
of the show was possible, but learning more about the chemistry
in science, I was very wrong.”
Qualitative feedback from the College of the Holy Cross’
anonymous “Course Evaluation Forms” also conveyed the
students’ overall satisfaction with the course. Students stated
that they enjoyed the course sessions and found them engaging.
Students positively remarked on the lecture style and on the
balance of lecturing, activities, and presented media, saying
“good mix of lecture, videos, and experiments”, and “great
classes with really cool experiments and demonstrations”.
■
FUTURE STUDIES AND IMPLICATIONS
To foster a conversational approach to experiential learning as a
way to “knowledge creation”,45 I encouraged the students to ask
general science questions throughout the semester. For example,
when viewing a movie clip of a battle between Spiderman and
the supervillain Electro, the students asked about “ball
lightning”, a phenomenon whose nature is unclear in the
scientific world. Similarly, the students asked why their parents
had told them to stand away from a microwave when heating
their food. These questions led to fruitful discussions on what it
takes for a phenomenon to be accepted by the scientific
community, and how technology can be resisted because of
unfounded claims. In the future, I will allot more class time for
open-ended questions. Future iterations of the course will also
allot two class sessions for the discussion of the semester-long
reading of The Martian. The first session will allow the students
to reflect on the reading as it relates to their individual
perspectives and emotions, and the second session will have the
students identify chemical concepts covered in the semester
within the story and reflect on whether those concepts were
incorporated accurately.
Science fiction is readily available and, as a pedagogical tool,
challenges the students to assess their previous knowledge and
to apply this knowledge to the media they are being exposed to.
Sole reliance on the passive absorption of knowledge from
17
traditional pedagogies provides an insufficient strategy to
develop student motivation to understand science and will not
17 sustain the growing need to educate critical consumers. In
experiential learning environments, students can relate the
scientific content to their own lives which rarely occurs in
17
traditional science courses. Courses such as “Putting the Science
in SciFi” facilitate and complement the development of scientific
17 interest of nonscience majors to become critical consumers of
science.
17
17
■ CONCLUSION
Herein, I describe a nonmajors chemistry course taught on the
background of recognizable science fiction stories using
17 constructivist and experiential learning strategies. Assessment
of the course indicates a high level of student engagement. The
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J. Chem. Educ. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Journal of Chemical Education
pretest and posttest indicate an increase in the students’
understanding of basic chemistry topics. The course assessment
demonstrates that the context of science fiction motivated the
students to conceive of innovative ideas using established
paradigms and improve their philosophical inquiry into science.
■
ASSOCIATED CONTENT
* Supporting Information
sı
The Supporting Information is available at https://pubs.ac-
s.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00264.
Student survey responses (PDF)
What did we do today? document highlighting the flow of
topics within the course (PDF, DOCX)
Writing Assignment 1, assignment description (PDF,
DOCX)
Writing Assignment 2, assignment description and rubric
(PDF, DOCX)
Writing Assignment 3, assignment description and rubric
(PDF, DOCX)
Final project, create your own comic book, assignment
description and rubric (PDF, DOC)
■
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
L. Gaby Avila-Bront − Department of Chemistry, College of the
Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts 01610, United States;
orcid.org/0000-0002-0998-9439; Email: lavila@
holycross.edu
Complete contact information is available at:
https://pubs.acs.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.0c00264
Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
■
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank members of the College of the
Holy Cross Chemistry Department for useful conversations, as
well as the students of CHEM 199 for their participation. Special
gratitude is extended to Drs. Luis Avila and Elena Bront de Avila
for their invaluable discussions.
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